


Inside Out

by andystarr



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: (Former) Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Adventure, But definitely don't count the unaired episodes, Established ZaDf, I guess this is all technically canon-compliant, M/M, PAK Lore, Resisty Partners, Romance, ZaDr, character death but not really, emotionally stunted friends trying to fall in love, rated m for some violence and language, really tho it's more friends to lovers, zim's dead but he's ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:58:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21035129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andystarr/pseuds/andystarr
Summary: It was meant to be a simple information retrieval mission.If things don't go to plan, Resisty Agent Dib can usually rely on his partner and best friend to swoop in and save his ass. When Dib survives a mission by the skin of his teeth and finds himself with nothing left of his partner but a PAK that he can't seem to let go of, he'll need to look within in order to figure out how to do the impossible.





	1. Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back!! This fic is a short pitstop in between two much longer projects. Based on cool PAK headcanons I've seen on tumblr, the movie Venom, and the unaired episode "10 Minutes to Doom" (which this fic is not compliant with), here's my next lil project!

**i.**

It was meant to be a simple information retrieval mission. 

Dib spins in his chair as they wait for the call. Zim sits next to him, tapping his foot and humming to himself.

“You know what I miss?” asks Dib.

“What?” 

“I miss those little, like… those little tiny ice cream things. You know what I mean?”

Zim appears to ponder this as he watching Dib fling himself around in his seat. 

“The Vortian ones?” Zim asks.

“Yeah, they were… I can’t think of the name right now. They were really good.”

“They tasted salty,” says Zim, his face scrunching at the memory.

“They were savory,” Dib corrects. “They were little…” He pauses in his aimless spinning to make a small circle with a thumb and forefinger and present it to Zim. “You know? Like little ice cream balls?”

Zim’s brow raises delicately, a gesture that Dib suspects he picked up from his human partner, who actually has eyebrows to raise. 

“I remember them,” says Zim. “I just didn’t like them.”

“You like sour stuff,” Dib notes. “Like that drink.”

Dib watches Zim’s antenna twitch, and he knows that he remembers the fruity, citrusy beverage they’d gotten at a pit stop a few months back. It had tasted like candy and had the alcohol content of a fine Plookesian liquor, and they’d accidentally gotten drunk off it and spent the night in increasing hysterics.

Zim smiles. “I liked it the night we drank it. Not the morning after.”

Dib spins himself again, then stops when he remembers the unfortunately familiar spinning sensation he'd felt for an entire day after drinking that stuff. “Same.”

The conversation lulls, and Zim turns back to focus on driving. Where they’re driving, they don’t know. Dib leans back in his seat and puts his feet up on the dashboard in the hopes that Zim will yell at him for it. Zim does, and Dib teases him for it, and Zim just shakes his head.

Dib gets up and stretches. Zim slaps the accelerator pad and the ship darts forward a hundred feet, scary-fast. Dib falls backwards on his ass. 

Just as Zim is laughing and Dib is pretending to be outraged, the call comes in. Finally. 

Zim answers the call as Dib picks himself up and takes his seat. An image appears onscreen of a vortian, dressed in the same navy blue uniform as they are, his hands crossed neatly behind his back.

“Agents,” he greets. 

“Captain Lard Nar,” says Zim, bowing his head. 

Dib bows his head, his face flushing. He lays his palms on his thighs. 

“I understand you’re near your destination,” says Lard Nar. “I expect you will follow orders this time.”

“Of course, Captain,” says Zim.

“Dib?”  


Dib stares at his feet for a moment too long before looking up and meeting the captain’s eyes. 

“Of course, Captain,” Dib parrots.

Lard Nar huffs. “‘Of course,’ he says.” 

Dib’s face burns. He looks back at the floor. 

“Captain,” says Zim, his voice even. “The mission?”

“Right,” says Lard Nar, his tone still a little irritated. “This will be a simple information retrieval mission. We had another team do a sweep when they were evacuating prisoners two weeks ago, but we need the two of you to do a thorough walkthrough for anything they may have missed.” 

Zim gives a “hm” of surprise, of disappointment. He’s more composed than Dib.

“Are you serious?” Dib asks, his voice louder than he’d meant. “You’re sending us to do cleanup?” 

Lard Nar’s eyes narrow. “I’m sending you on information retrieval,” he says, buckling down. “The last group to go through was a little busy rescuing prisoners to do any real scans for information—”

“Bullshit,” says Dib. “If you sent enough agents to break out everyone left on Moo-Ping 10, you sent the arachnoids, too. Didn’t you?”

The arachnoids, little spy bugs that infiltrated systems and gathered information, had been an invention of Zim and Dib’s. That had been back when they were on better terms with the leadership. 

Lard Nar has the decency to look bashful as Dib catches him in his lie.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Lard Nar. “This is your mission.”

“This is worse than when we started!” Dib snaps. “Come _on_, if you’re going to punish me, at least don’t drag Zim down with me!” 

He gesture to Zim, who’s tight-lipped and staring at him with a mixture of embarrassment and fury.

“Come on,” Dib repeats to Zim, “you know I’m right.”

Zim takes a steadying breath, then turns to the screen. “Captain—”

“If you can handle completing a single mission, maybe I wouldn’t have to punish you at all!” Lard Nar snaps, his composure shattered. 

“I complete missions just fine,” Dib snaps back, whipping his head around to glare at Lard Nar. Out of the corner of his eye, Dib sees Zim drop his face into his hand.

“Do you?” asks Lard Nar. “Tell that to your mission reports. It seems you can’t get through a single assignment without landing yourself on med leave, half dead!”

“What does that matter?” Dib shoots back. “I’ve never hurt another agent, I’ve never left an innocent behind, I’ve never—”  


“Enough, Dib!” barks Lard Nar. “You are to take your ship to Resisty base Z5-683 and collect Agent Tak. She’ll be waiting for you there and will escort you for the rest of the mission.”

“_What_?” Dib and Zim shout at once. 

“You’ve _got_ to be—”

“Captain, please, anyone but Tak—”

“I don’t want to hear it, boys!” Lard Nar growls, holding up a hand. “If you insist on acting like children, you get a babysitter. I eagerly await Tak’s mission report. Captain Lard Nar, signing off.”

“You can’t do this to Zim!” Dib shouts, his blood boiling as the screen goes black.

Everything is quiet for a moment. Dib stares at the floor, outraged and embarrassed for just a second before springing back to life.

“He can’t do this to you,” Dib shouts, gesturing out the windshield. “You literally did nothing wrong. I don’t know why he insists on blaming you, too.”

Zim draws his knees up to his chest, a telltale sign that he’s frustrated but doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Zim, come on,” says Dib, approaching his long-suffering partner and dropping to his knees at Zim’s elbow. “You know this is so unfair.”

Zim says nothing for another moment. Then, he turns to look at Dib. 

“I’m the one who breaks protocol every time,” he points out.

“Yeah,” Dib agrees, “but that’s only because we have to.”

Zim’s eyes narrow.

“_I _have to,” Zim corrects.

Dib’s brows knit in confusion, and he stares at Zim for a moment, waiting for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.

“Well, I mean—”

“_I _have to break protocol,” Zim grinds out, “every time, because of _you_.” 

“Zim,” says Dib softly. “Come on. We have the best success rates of anyone in our entire unit. There’s a reason why we’re both special agents this early on! We make the most out of every mission! We get good results!”

“You get yourself hurt,” Zim grunts, suddenly looking away. “More and more every time.”

“For the results!” Dib presses. “Come on, our last big break, we saved double the prisoners than what Nar’d asked us for. We basically liberated Vort _by ourselves_. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Zim looks up at the ceiling, his eyes closed like he was silently praying to some old, Irken deity that Dib had never heard of. He gives an exhausted sigh, and Dib knows that his strategy is failing.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” says Zim.

“Zim, come on. At least agree with me that it’s not fair—”

Dib’s sentence ends with a squeak as he feels Zim’s tiny hand wrap around his wrist in a death grip.

“What isn’t _fair_,” Zim seethes, his eyes dark and dangerous and boring into Dib’s face, “is having to scrape you up off the ground and fly you to a ship with a med bay, as fast as I can, to keep you from dying every time we so much as go out to get groceries.”

Dib feels his insides freeze under Zim’s death stare. After all these years, Dib still hated it when Zim fixed him with that look. 

“That’s never happened on a grocery run before,” he corrects weakly.

Zim releases Dib’s wrist and throws himself out of the pilot’s seat. He stomps into middle of the room, slams his foot on the elevator pad, and whisks upward, into an opening hole in the ceiling. Dib watches him go.

Dib taps his fingers across the dashboard and waits. He can’t wait long before he’s plopping himself into the pilot’s seat and pressing the intercom button.

“Agent Zim,” he announces, pitching his voice into that flat, droll tone that always made Zim laugh. “Agent Zim, you’re needed in the cockpit. Over.”

Nothing. Dib feels his stomach twist a little. Zim loves his tantrums, but, more than anything, he loves making a scene out of forgiving Dib for his unforgivable transgressions. He should be coming back down any second now, that faux-irritated look on his little green face, his hands on his hips, the “_welllll??_” rolling out of his mouth. 

Although, that had been happening less and less lately.

Zim doesn’t show. Dib scoffs and presses the intercom again.

“Zim, to the office, please,” he tries again, this time making his voice high and nasally. “Zim, to the office. Your robot parents are here to take you to the dentist.” 

Still nothing. Dammit, that was some of Dib’s best impression work. 

They’d installed the intercom after the Resisty gave them this old clunker to fix up. Zim had insisted on it in case there was an emergency. They mostly used it to bother each other or to talk when Dib was in his bunk, trying to fall asleep.

“Zim, to the office, please,” Dib repeats. “Your partner is waiting to apologize for pissing you off. Once again, Zim, to the office please.” 

Dib waits. 

He’s never been that good at waiting, so he hits the intercom button again.

“Uh, is there a Zim, here?” he asks, pitching his voice low again and emulating the oft-cracking, uncomfortably deep tone of a twelfth-grade Keef. “Your, like… dog, or something? It’s, like, in aisle four? And it drank a bunch of, uh, canola oil? Can you, like, come and get it? It’s, um, pretty gross.” 

Still nothing. Dib cracks his knuckles and decides to go big.

“I’m going to start singing in a second,” Dib finally warns. 

He hears an over-exaggerated sigh from the other end of the line and then the circle in the floor starts to ascend again. It drops slowly, this time with Zim standing on the elevator pad with his hand on his hip, GIR tucked under his arm like a football.

“When you start singing, he starts singing,” Zim says, by way of explanation. 

GIR squeaks in agreement.

Dib holds his arms out and Zim hands over the tiny bot. GIR had been malfunctioning a lot lately, and Dib had been cautiously trying to fix him for the past couple of months. It stressed Zim out too much to even try, but any real attempt Dib made at fixing him ended in frustration and yelling. 

They didn’t yell much — at least, they didn’t use to — and Dib never yelled back when Zim snatched GIR away and insisted that he couldn’t trust Dib to fix him. Dib tried not to feel too hurt about it — it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dib, Dib knows, it was just that Zim would rather have a broken GIR than no GIR at all. 

Dib places GIR on his lap and opens up his chest panel, wincing at the way it sparks and fizzles. GIR isn’t completely dead, not yet, but he certainly isn’t an easy fix. Zim paces behind Dib in short strides then stops, peering over his shoulder and gripping the back of his chair.

GIR giggles as Dib pushes a few wires around. Zim gives a pained whine at the sound.

“It’s alright,” Dib says, trying to sound soothing. “We’ll fix him.” 

Zim just whines again, standing on his toes and leaning onto the back rest. 

Dib knows that what GIR needs is new parts and a lot of time to get fixed properly. But, as Resisty agents, time isn’t really in abundance for Zim and Dib. Their assignments had been total busywork lately, but they’d been so close together that Dib barely had time to sleep before he and Zim were pulling up to a new planet, a new job, a new opportunity to prove that they could handle the big leagues again.

Dib pauses in his work to remember the day they’d gotten their promotion. He’d looked at Zim and wondered if Zim had been that happy to achieve his invader rank — if this, somehow, undid any of the dormant pain that he knew Zim still carried around from the old days. 

Zim whined again. “What are you doing?” 

Dib shakes himself out of the memory. “I’m just thinking.”

Zim’s hand travels from the back of the seat to Dib’s shoulder and squeezes. Dib sighs and thinks that, if not for him, they would probably be in the position to ask for some time off so that they could fix Zim’s old friend. 

It isn’t that Dib considers himself to be particularly thoughtless, or reckless, or any of those things that Zim and Lard Nar call him. It’s just that this war has been going on since before Zim and Dib became friends, and knowing that just a _little_ more danger could make peace come faster… well. It always seemed like the obvious choice.

Dib closes GIR’s chest panel and sits the robot up in his lap. GIR just kind of looks at him, his normal zest for life quelled by worn-out circuits and a CPU that was in desperate need of replacement.

He looks over his shoulder at Zim, who’s still standing close. He covers Zim’s clutching hand with his own and gives it a gentle stroke.

“I just don’t think I can do anything until we get him some new parts.”

“When can we do that?” Zim asks. 

Dib purses his lips. “Probably not for a while,” he says.

Zim purses his lips and then, quick as a flash, snatches GIR out of Dib’s grasp and steps away. 

“We would be eligible for time off,” Zim says, his voice icy.

“Well, we’re not,” Dib retorts, frustration bubbling. “And if you’re still so mad about it, you’re welcome to find yourself a new partner.”

He regrets it the second it leaves his mouth. Zim’s up and gone in an instant. Dib doesn’t call for him again.

He wishes Zim would see the bigger picture. GIR would always be here, ready to be fixed. Maybe it would take until after the war. They were all making sacrifices.

Dib wishes Zim understood that better. 

The cockpit is cold and awkward with Tak sitting in the pilot’s seat. Zim had come down to greet her and promptly retreated back to his bunk, probably to complain to GIR about how annoying Dib was. 

Tak steers them toward Moo-Ping 10, a prison that had already been broken out and swept for data. Dib sits next to her with his arms crossed.

Tak whistles a jolly tune while she drives, probably because she knows it drives Dib crazy, after all these years living with Zim, who whistles without even realizing he’s doing it. 

“So,” she finally asks. “What are you boys fighting about this time?”

Dib hugs himself tighter and frowns. “Stop mining for gossip.” 

Tak gives a short hum. “Well, excuse me for trying to help.”

“You can’t help, and you don’t want to help.”

“What makes you think I can’t? I’ve known Zim longer than you have.”

Dib stares out the window, his brow furrowed. “You don’t know him as well as I do.”

“Of course.” Tak scoffs. “Pardon me for even trying. Of course, the famous Zim and Dib know each other better than anyone else in the world. Two best friends, destined to fight the evil irkens and live together in their little bachelor pad forever—”

“Exactly,” Dib interrupts. “So, thanks but no thanks. I don’t need your help.”

Tak hums again, then turns back to her driving. “Well, we’re almost there. So you should probably start making up with him now.” 

Dib sighs, shoots Tak one more look, and drags himself out of the co-pilot’s seat. He gives the elevator pad a tap with his heel and it sends him upward, into their shared room. 

Zim is lying on his side, curled up tight with GIR in his arms. Dib feels a pang of sympathy at the sight. 

“Hey, space boy,” he says softly. “We’re almost here.”

Zim doesn’t react.

“Come on,” says Dib. “You don’t want Tak coming up here and getting you out of bed, do you?”

Zim clenches around himself tighter. Dib sighs and sits at the edge of Zim’s bunk, ducking his head so he can squeeze himself into the little cutout in the wall that Zim slept in.

“Hey,” Dib says again, reaching forward to squeeze Zim’s shoulder. 

Zim flinches away, his lower lip pouting.

“Zim,” Dib tries again, attempting to sound authoritative. “Will you at least talk to me?”

Zim doesn’t react again. Dib feels his patience thinning.

“If you want to actually resolve this, you’re going to have to sit through a conversation with me at some point,” he says, his hand dropping from Zim’s shoulder. “It’s not fair for you to just get mad at me and then not even talk to me about it.” 

Zim is still for a moment before his head turns sharply around to look at Dib. 

“What would happen to you if I weren’t there to help you every time you got in trouble?” 

Dib shrugged. “I dunno. I guess… I never really worry about that. I always know you’ll have my back. Isn’t that what makes us such a good team?”

Zim looks away so he can glare at the wall.

“Come on, Zim, this isn’t some game,” says Dib. “People are dying, every day. The Empire isn’t going to fall over night. We knew when we signed up that working for the Resisty was dangerous.”

“You make it _more_ dangerous,” Zim grumbles.

“So we can help people,” Dib insists. “So this can all end sooner.” 

“And then what?” Zim murmurs.

Dib cocks his head to the side, bumping it on the ceiling of the bunk. “What do you mean?”

“What happens after the war?”

Dib pauses. “I guess… I don’t know. I never really thought about what we’d do after.” 

Zim rolls himself out of bed and gently places GIR on his pillow. He fixes Dib with an unreadable look.

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Zim says. 

“Well, what do _you _want?” Dib calls as Zim descends back into the cockpit. 

He doesn’t get an answer.

They reach Moo-Ping 10. The entire prison is just a cluster of rectangular buildings and cells, and Tak parks them on the second tier of the big, central building. They cloak the ship, a safety precaution that Dib thinks is unnecessary. No one is here. They might as well be getting sent out to fetch Lard Nar his coffee and donuts. 

Tak leads them down and through the abandoned prison, and Dib releases a couple of arachnoids to scan the area for signs of anything interesting. Zim trails behind them, his arms still crossed and his expression still sour. 

The walk through the prison is quiet, and Dib thinks that it’s one of the spookier places he’s been in a while. Everything is just so… _still_. Dib hates stillness. He longs for the days he and Zim used to dive headfirst into the action.

Tak directs her flashlight this way and that, pointing into empty cells and down abandoned halls. Dib and Zim trail silently behind her.

“Will you two just kiss and make up already?” she eventually snaps. “It’s too weird to not hear your constant chattering.”

Behind Dib, Zim grunts. Dib just sighs.

“I tried,” he says.

“Well, good for you, Dib,” Tak drawls. “I’m so proud of you.”

Dib clenches his fist and promises himself that he’ll behave on this mission, if only to avoid getting stuck with Tak in the future. 

They’re turning a corner when Tak’s antennae shoot upward. She stops, and Dib almost runs into her.

“What?” he asks, irritated.

“_Shhh_!”

Dib feels a hand on his shoulder and turns to see Zim, standing close with his antennae also pointed to the ceiling.

“What is it?” he whispers. “What did you hear?”

Zim shoots him a look, his eyes wide. 

“Someone’s here.” 

Dib freezes, and immediately he’s reaching back to grab for Zim’s other hand.

They hadn’t brought any of their higher-caliber weapons. This was just supposed to be an information retrieval mission. 

Zim’s PAK whirs, and he soon meets Dib’s reaching hand with a small gamma pistol. Dib turns back to shoot him one more look.

“It’s just one person,” Tak murmurs, her antennae twitching as she concentrates. “They’re on the floor above us, walking toward us from the east.”

As if on cue, a set of footsteps pace above them.

“We need to get back to the ship, now,” says Tak, her voice deep and urgent.

Dib nods as he feels Zim’s fingers dig into his shoulder. He won’t fight Tak on this one. With the irkens, he’s learned that they generally don’t travel alone. He also has no reason to be in this abandoned prison to begin with, so he really has no qualms with leaving.

They turn and make their way back down the hall toward Zim and Dib’s cruiser. Dib takes one last look over his shoulder and then takes up the rear, his pistol cocked and ready. 

As they’re moving, a familiar, tri-tone beeping sound stops Dib in his tracks.

“What was that?” whispers Tak, turning back to face them.

The look on Zim’s face is one of pure horror as he turns back to stare at Dib. Dib’s eyes go wide.

“My arachnoid,” Dib whispers. “It found something.”

“Probably the irken upstairs,” Tak says. “Leave it and let’s go. We’ll come back for it later.”

“No,” Dib whispers. “It… it found _something_.”

Tak’s eyes narrow. “Something? Here?” 

Dib turns back the other way, sidestepping as Zim reaches for his hand. “The irkens must have actually left something behind. Something the Resisty didn’t catch.” He points to the ceiling, where footsteps continue to fall as the mystery irken appears to be pacing back and forth. “Maybe that’s what this one’s looking for.”

“Dib—”

Dib turns back to look at Zim. “Whatever they’re coming back for must be big,” Dib whispers. “We can find it before they do.”  


“That’s not what we’re here for,” Tak hisses.

“It’s not?” asks Dib, feigning innocence. “I thought we were doing information retrieval.” 

He ignores Tak’s sputtering and picks up the pace, following where he heard the sound of his robot. 

Zim curses behind him, and Dib thinks he hears him and Tak arguing in quiet, urgent Irken. Eventually, he hears the pitter-patter of Zim’s feet chasing behind him.

“Dib, we need to go,” Zim whispers. “If it’s something important—”

“It could be huge for us,” Dib finishes. He looks down at Zim, his excitement blooming. “We could finally get back to doing real missions!”

“Dib, that’s not what I was going to say—” 

“We can get time off to fix GIR,” Dib whispers. 

He swats Zim’s hand away again.

“_Dib_,” Zim grunts. “You know as well as I do that there isn’t going to just be one of them!” 

“They don’t even know where it is,” Dib whispers. “We do! Let me just see what the arachnoid found and then we’ll go!”

He ignores Zim’s continuing protests and he jogs down the hall. Eventually, he finds his robot: perched on top of a tablet of some kind, its lights blinking victoriously.

Dib practically dives for it, Zim just inches behind him as they reach the lost tablet. He picks it up gingerly and stows it under his arm.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Now we can go. Where’s Tak?”

A shriek behind them sends Dib and Zim running back to where they’d last seen Tak. They round the corner and find her in the hands of an enforcer, her arms pinned behind her back.

Dib curses under his breath and aims his pistol at the enforcer, the tablet still tucked under his arm.

“Let her go,” he barks, drawing himself up to full height.

The enforcer had never met an alien as tall as Dib before, he can tell. He cowers for a second before jostling Tak and making her growl. Then he pauses, his red eyes going wide and they travel from Dib’s face to the tablet.

“Give me that,” he growls, gesturing with his chin to the tablet.

Dib narrows his eyes. “No.”

“Give me that, and you can have your traitor back.”

Dib freezes for a moment, his thoughts spinning through his head. He feels rather than sees Zim by his side. He takes aim and shoots the enforcer right between the eyes.

Everything falls apart.

The bang echoes through the prison, and then a hundred footsteps start stomping their way.

Tak runs to join Zim and Dib, and they stand back to back to back as a flood of smallers storm in. For a moment, Dib feels a hand grip at his thigh. He grits his teeth and mentally promises Zim to make it up to him.

“We have you surrounded,” a squeaky voice cries from within the chaos around them. 

Dozens of weapons are pointed right at them.

“Drop your weapons and drop the tablet, or we’ll kill you all where you stand!”

“What’ll they do if we _do _drop the tablet?” Dib wonders aloud, quiet enough that only Tak and Zim can hear him.

He can hear Zim snort for a second through his frown. Tak gives an exaggerated groan, and the next thing Dib knows, she’s shoving him onto the floor.

Dib had forgotten why Lard Nar had sent Tak, of all people, to babysit them on this mission. Now, he remembers.

He ducks his head and covers the tablet as Tak unleashes absolute hell on the irkens around them, her PAK lasers leveling the entire group. They shoot at her, but she’s too quick — she’s had all the military training they haven’t, and she knows how to take advantage of all of their weaknesses. 

When the maelstrom ends, Tak starts running without them. Dib picks himself up as Zim stands, too, and they take off after Tak. 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” asks Dib. “Good thing Lard Nar let us bring Tak along.”

Zim shoots him a glare that looks more pained than angry and says nothing, just keeps running.

They’re out of the building and almost at the ship when a beam of light shoots down, right behind Dib. Dib looks back, the tablet still clutched in his hands, and sees an enormous battle ship above him, shooting down a blast so powerful that the upper tier of the building behind them becomes ash in an instant. 

He freezes for a second, finally realizing that he’s in over his head.

Zim grabs him by the front of his jacket and drags him forward, and they take off running for the ship again, just behind Tak. Tak and Zim shoot at the ship with their PAK lasers, but it’s not doing anything, and Dib’s ears perk up as he hears the hum of the battle ship recharging its cannon. 

It’s an old one, he tells himself. It needs time to recharge, which means they have time to get to—

Another beam of light shoots downward from the ship, separating Zim and Dib from Tak. This one was transporting five irken guards, each equipped with a two-pronged, glowing metal spear. Dib recognizes they as the type Zim once described: the electric shocks they produce are specifically designed to strike an irken’s nervous system and temporarily disable the PAK’s healing function. Zim explained that it was for unruly irkens, like when he’d been in training and got caught when he wandered off to find Irk’s surface. 

Dib cocks his pistol again and just starts shooting at the guards. He gets one square in the spooch and the body buckles and then crumples, but the other four are advancing fast. Dib keeps shooting, and Zim appears at his side a moment later. The sound of the cannon charging is deafening, a slow and grinding windup to what Dib thinks might be his untimely end. 

Behind the guards, he sees that Tak has reached the ship and is diving into the cockpit. All they need to do is hold off these assholes until she gets back to them.

Dib wants to keep shooting, but he knows he’s starting to run low on ammunition. He takes a step back, a silent signal, and Zim launches himself forward. 

The guards probably aren’t expecting someone as small as Zim to be so quick, but invader training coupled with Resisty training has made his partner all but unstoppable. 

And then, he’s stopped.

A guard lands a lucky hit right below Zim’s ribcage with the bright, glowing spear. Zim screams. Dib starts shooting again as Tak lifts off and starts toward them. He manages to dive forward and grab the spear of the first fallen guard, and he’s standing over Zim’s fallen form, locked in a battle with one hand and still gripping the tablet for dear life. 

Part of him tells him to drop the tablet, to stop handicapping himself, but he just… he _can’t. _He can’t let Zim be hurt for nothing.

He uses his size to an advantage and takes down the second guard, but the third tackles him from behind and the tablet goes flying. He looks over and sees Zim, clutching his abdomen and bleeding profusely, scampering toward where the tablet went. 

The fourth guard rises again, and she and the and fifth guards chase after Zim, one of them stomping, hard, on the back of his head, the other brutally ripping his PAK from his back and tossing it away.

Zim screams. A guard grabs the tablet and holds it aloft, then glows white and disappears, his body fading as he’s transported back to the battle ship. 

He hears Tak yelling something at him, and turns to see that she’s shooting at the first guard, risen from where Dib had shot him and trying to climb into Dib’s ship. 

The background noise of the charging cannon stops. Everything is quiet for a second.

The remaining guards all stop and look at each other, as if they know what’s going to happen but hadn’t anticipated that they’d still be on the ground for it. If Dib had the time, he would think that they were idiots for ever even entertaining the idea that their Empire cared enough about them to transport them back up. They start sprinting away, as if that will save them.

Dib sees Zim, on the ground and dying. He races toward him.

“Zim!” he shouts, dropping to his knees. 

Zim looks terrible, his face pale and clammy, his eyes dull. Dib cups his cheek and presses his forehead to Zim’s. 

“My… my PAK,” Zim croaks. 

“I’ll get it. I’m getting it,” Dib babbles. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll get it. I’ll be right back.”

The PAK is in good shape, hardly dented, and Dib picks it up and runs back for Zim. 

He’s about fifty feet away from Zim just as another hand grabs him by the elbow, and then his feet are lifted of the ground.

His head whips around as he sees Tak trying to pull him into the cockpit, but he can’t— not without—

“_ZIM_!” he screams, and, just an instant before everything he’s ever cared about goes, Zim turns and looks at him.

“_ZIIIIM_!!!!” 

He’s wailing, but it doesn’t matter, Tak is flying them away as fast as she can with one hand gripping Dib and the other gripping the yoke. 

He’s crying as the world goes white, as the guards and Zim are left behind, blasted away.

The cockpit is quiet. 

Dib sits rigid in the co-pilot’s seat, clutching the PAK. Tak stands behind him, a gentle hand resting on his shoulder. She’s said that she’ll do all the talking. 

The transmission opens and Lard Nar is looking at them. His expression is expectant, perhaps a little prematurely annoyed, but his face falls when he sees Dib, what he’s holding in his arms.

“What happened?” asks Lard Nar, his voice low and serious.

“Sir,” Tak says, “there was an ambush. We had no idea it was coming, and we were unprepared. There was nothing we could do.” 

Tak’s voice shakes. Lard Nar stares at the PAK.

“Where is Agent Zim?” he asks.

Dib’s still sweaty. He’s still processing. His mind is blank, and he can’t think of a single thing. The tears start flowing down his cheeks anyway.

“Agent Dib?” says Lard Nar quietly.

“Zim perished during the mission,” said Tak, her voice still uneven. 

Dib is staring at the space over Lard Nar’s right shoulder and crushing the PAK against his chest.

“I see,” says Lard Nar. He pauses for a long time. “Agent Tak, please return to your base as soon as you see fit. Agent Dib…”

Lard Nar doesn’t know what to say. Dib can’t meet his eyes.

“Take care of yourself, Dib,” says Lard Nar. “I understand this is… probably quite challenging for you. Drop Tak off at her base and then return to headquarters immediately.”

Dib doesn’t respond. He hasn’t heard a word of what Lard Nar just said. His vision is blurry and his throat is dry.

“Dib?” asks Lard Nar.

“Thank you, Captain,” says Tak quickly, tapping her fingers against Dib’s shoulder. “I will provide you with an update and my mission report shortly.”

Lard Nar’s stare is heavy on Dib. He lets his gaze flicker over to the vortian. He’s surprised to see the emotion splashed across Lard Nar’s face, but then he remembers that, once upon a time, Lard Nar had cared a great deal about Zim.

Before Dib had to ruin everything with his recklessness, his thoughtlessness…

Before Dib had gotten Zim killed…

He doesn’t register when Tak cuts the transmission with Lard Nar, or when she leads him to the elevator pad, or when she takes him upstairs and practically lifts him up into his bunk — right above Zim’s—

“GIR,” he murmurs.

Tak sighs and places Zim’s sleeping robot onto the pillow next to Dib’s head. Dib’s tears come faster and he chokes on a sob.

“It’ll be okay, Dib,” says Tak softly. 

Dib stares at GIR’s sleeping face and says nothing. 

**ii.**

Dib stares forward, not comprehending as Lard Nar speaks to him.

“Dib?” Lard Nar repeats, his voice louder.

Dib blinks — where was he? He looks up at the screen. Lard Nar is staring at him.

“Huh?”

“Tak has informed me that you dropped her off at her base two days ago. I need confirmation that you’re on your way to headquarters.”

Dib hadn’t piloted his ship since Tak left. He’s just been floating.

“I’m… getting there,” he says.

Lard Nar doesn’t believe him. He sighs. 

“Dib, I understand that losing a partner can be upsetting. In this war, we’ve all lost people that we’ve cared about…”

He goes on. Dib stares forward and tunes him out. 

He clutches the PAK, Zim’s PAK, tighter to his chest as Lard Nar rambles on in the background. He thinks about the last time he talked to Zim, the last thing he said to him, and it was nothing — a promise that Dib couldn’t keep. It meant nothing. Zim left his life in a frenzy, unfinished, violent, unfair. The tears come again and he doesn’t bother stopping them. They aren’t quiet tears — these days, they’re loud and heaving and desperate, because he started thinking again and he can’t stop thinking, about Zim, his best friend, how it’s all Dib’s fault. 

Lard Nar stops talking. He sighs again.

“Agent Dib,” says Lard Nar. “I am going to give you an extension to get to headquarters. Sort yourself out and get here in two weeks. Once you get here, you’ll be assigned a new partner, and you’ll be sent on a new mission as soon as we have a need for you. Understand?”

Dib doesn’t understand. He looks down at the floor and nods.

Lard Nar signs off and Dib stands in the cockpit for a second. He takes the elevator up to his room and drags himself into his bunk. 

There’s a window right next to where Dib lays his head to sleep. It was why Zim let him have the top bunk. He’d wanted it to show how superior he was to Dib, but Dib had begged for the window, and Zim had eventually just given up and let him have it. 

Dib stares out the window now, watching as his ship goes nowhere.

Eventually, he strips off his t-shirt and old sweatpants — the only thing he’s been wearing for the past eight days — and tosses them on the floor. No Zim around anymore to tell him to pick his clothes up. 

Dib hugs Zim’s PAK to his chest, its flat underside cold against his bare skin. He traces along the ridges of the PAK, the dent. He closes his eyes.

He hasn’t been able to turn his brain off for days. He can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t do anything. All he can do is think about Zim. He doesn’t want to think about anything anymore. He doesn’t want to keep thinking about how this is his fault, how they never even got the stupid tablet in the end, how Lard Nar already expects him to get himself a new partner and just… get back to it. He can’t. He won’t. He would rather get fired that have to share his ship, his home, with anyone but Zim. 

He sits up, cramped in his tiny bunk, but he leans forward to the hatch by his feet. He opens it and grabs a bottle of high-strength sleeping pills. He pops two and lays back down. He waits, holding Zim’s PAK to his chest, for the darkness to slip over him. 

_DIB!!!!!_

Dib wakes with a jolt, sitting upright so fast that he smashes he head against the ceiling of his bunk. 

He looks around, disoriented. What was that? A dream? It didn’t feel like it. It felt like someone — like Zim — had just screamed at him from inside his head. He takes a steadying breath and looks over at GIR, who is snuggled up on his pillow and staring at him.

“Did you say something?” Dib asks.

GIR blows a spit bubble and says nothing. 

And then, oddly — for no reason at all — and urge hits Dib so hard that he has to close his eyes. He opens them and lays his gaze back down onto GIR, and the urge hits him again, hard and fast. _Fix GIR!!!_ his subconscious is screaming. _Fix GIR!!! Now!!! Do it now!!!! FIX HIM!!_

Dib takes another breath as GIR stares back at him. 

He slides around and pushes himself out of his bunk. He stops. He looks down. 

He’d forgotten that he’d fallen asleep with Zim’s PAK on his chest. He must have sweat a lot in bed, or something — that or Zim’s PAK adhered to skin automatically, because… 

It’s stuck.

Dib tugs at it, trying to pull it off his chest. He tries to get a finger between his skin and the PAK, but it’s sealed tight against him, like its flat underside has molded to his chest. He whimpers a little, a sudden fear overtaking him.

What does this mean? What’s happening to him? Why did he just hear someone scream his name?

The hair on the back of his neck stands up, and suddenly he realizes that he’s not alone. It’s a sixth sense that he’s developed in all the years he’s worked for the Resisty. He knows when he’s being watched. 

“Stay put, GIR,” he says. 

GIR gurgles back at him and offers him a weak thumbs up. 

_FIX!!!!!!! GIR!!!!!!!_

“Jesus,” Dib mutters. He rubs at his temples with shaking fingers. “I’m going to fix you, GIR,” he says, not necessarily to GIR. “Just give me a sec.” 

He reaches into the compartment at the end of his bed and grabs his little laser gun. He gives GIR a pat on the head as he walks by, not really thinking about it. 

Gun cocked, Dib descends from their — _his_ bedroom, he reminds himself gloomily, and into the cockpit. 

The cockpit is empty. Dib leaves out the back and into the bathroom. He looks around, peeks into the shower, checks the linen closet. Nothing.

He catches a glimpse of himself as he heads back into the cockpit. He’s still naked, and the sight of his own body throws him into an abrupt fit of bashfulness so intense that he almost looks away. As he looks at himself, he watches the color on his face rise, spreading to his ears and down his neck. He stares at his own face in confusion. Why was he embarrassed? He’s seen himself naked literally thousands of times, and he’s never once been embarrassed. Why was his face all red?

What was happening?

He takes the elevator into the downstairs storage room, where he and Zim had also set up a couch and gaming console. He feels another tug of grief at the sight, but he forces himself to look through all of his boxes through blurry, tear-heavy eyes. He checks his suitcases, his food and water, everything, until he’s convinced that no one’s there. 

“Computer,” he calls from storage. “Is someone else here?”

“Uh, nope,” says the ship’s computer. 

Dib frowns. 

He takes the elevator back into the cockpit and stands in the middle of the room for a second, hands on his hips, just thinking. He doesn’t mean to tap the elevator pad, but then he’s back in his room and pulling on his sweatpants and t-shirt before he can even think about it. Next, he walks over to GIR and picks him up.

GIR stares at him, the confusion evident, even in his dysfunctional stupor.

Dib stares back, just as confused. Why did he pick GIR up? He never picks GIR up? 

_FIX._

“What the hell is going on, GIR?” he asks. 

GIR just stares. 

Dib takes a shaky, nervous breath. He reaches under his shirt and touches a hand to the PAK and realizes it’s warm under his palm. He gives it another tug, but it’s stuck tight on his skin. Real panic rises belatedly, and he rushes back to the cockpit and makes a call.

Lard Nar answers, and it must be late there, because he’s out of his uniform and holding a cup of tea. 

“Agent Dib,” says Lard Nar groggily. “What do you want?” 

“I wouldn’t be calling if this weren’t important,” says Dib.

Lard Nar blinks at Dib’s tone.

“Okay,” he says. “What is it, agent?” 

Dib lifts his shirt, exposing the PAK stuck to his chest. 

“I can’t get it off,” he says.

Lard Nar’s eyes bug out of his head. 

“Dib, what did you _do_?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Dib barks, embarrassed to think that Lard Nar would think… what, exactly? This whole situation was so unfathomable, Dib didn’t even know what to think Lard Nar thought. “I was just… holding it… and I fell asleep, and then…”

Dib jostles GIR into the crook of his elbow and points to the PAK. “I woke up, and it was like this! I can’t get it off, and I just… I feel… weird,” he finishes lamely.

Lard Nar’s eyes are still bugged out of his head. “What do you mean, ‘weird’?” he asks.

“I’m like… hearing things,” says Dib. “I don’t really know how to—”

“Okay,” says Lard Nar gently. “Dib, clearly you require medical attention. Report to headquarters, immediately, for a full psychological exam.” 

Dib pauses. 

“I don’t need a psych exam,” he says slowly. “I need to get this thing unstuck from me.” 

“Yes, we’ll get it… unstuck… from you,” Lard Nar says, just as slowly, like Dib’s an idiot. “And then we’ll probably just do a quick—”

“Do you think I’m lying?” Dib buts in, his face hot. 

He strides forward until he’s uncomfortably close to the screen. His hands gripped the dashboard and GIR falls out of his hold and into the pilot’s seat.

“Do you think I… did this to myself?”

Lard Nar gives him a pitying look. “Dib, grief can be… quite complex. And, humans are so… different, and I don’t—”

“I. Didn’t. Do. This,” Dib says through gritted teeth. “I need someone to get it off me.”

Lard Nar’s expression doesn’t shift, and Dib looks down. He tries to think of options — what can he do, if he boss won’t believe him? Should he just go to HQ anyway? Should he try to find someone else? Where would he even go?

“Dib,” says Lard Nar gently. “We can get you through this. But, resources are limited. We don’t have time to discuss this. Get back to headquarters and get the help you need. We’ll take the PAK to the research team, and we’ll get you a new partner, and it’ll be like—”

“I don’t want a new partner,” says Dib miserably.

“I know, Dib,” says Lard Nar, not unkindly. “I suppose… I underestimated how much Zim meant to you. I’m sorry. But, we need to keep moving forward. We’ve all lost people in this war.”

“I know,” says Dib, his face clouding over as grief takes hold of him again. 

“Come to headquarters as soon as possible,” says Lard Nar. “Until then, Agent Membrane.”

Dib doesn’t say anything.

“Dib?” asks Lard Nar. “Confirm with me that you’re coming to headquarters, please.”

Dib can’t say anything.

“Dib?”

He tries to take a deep breath, but his stomach is churning and his head is spinning.

“Dib.”

He can’t catch his breath. He white knuckles the dashboard as a wave of disorientation hits him.

“Dib!”

_DIB!!_

“OKAY!” Dib snarls, forcing himself to look at Lard Nar’s startled face. “I’m coming to headquarters! Invader Dib, signing off!”

“_Invader_—?”

Dib had already ended the call. He falls backward into the co-pilot’s seat. He’s exhausted and nauseated and his head is spinning. He pants for a while, his head lolled backward, his hands clammy and shaking. He closes his eyes and tries to pull himself together. 

Something’s wrong, he tells himself. He needs to figure out what the hell is going on. 

He lurches forward, springing onto his PAK legs and throwing himself at the guards. He doesn’t have a weapon with him — so _stupid_, he tells himself, for listening to Dib — but he uses his teeth, his sharp nails, his PAK’s weapons. He fights and claws as the humming above him gets louder and louder. 

The guards he fights are reacting like he’s some little smeet, and it’s almost satisfying to surprise them with his strength and skill. He wants to kill them, just for that. 

One of the guards gets away from him and starts advancing towards Dib. He launches himself sideways before Dib even notices what’s happening, and then an abrupt shock followed by an avalanche of pain sends him crumbling to the ground. 

The pain blurs the edges of his vision, but he sees Dib, as if in slow motion, dive for a spear and start fighting one of the guards. He wants to get up, to move, to do something, but he’s frozen to the ground as electricity courses through his body and makes him jolt and twitch. He watches from the ground as Dib stands over him, protects him, and he clenches his fists and tries to stand. 

The tablet soars away from them, and he forces himself to go chasing after it, even as his legs are like jelly and his side is on fire and he can barely see. 

They get him before he can reach the tablet. Something slams onto his head. He’s about to scream, but then he feels his entire nervous system spasm, and then it’s gone. 

He watches his own PAK go tumbling away from him, and everything goes blank. 

“Zim!” Dib is gripping his face and staring at him, and, despite it all, he feels a moment of peace to gaze at Dib’s sweaty, panicking face. 

“My… my PAK,” he says, his voice coming out cracked and unfamiliar. 

“I’ll get it. I’m getting it,” Dib cries. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll get it, I’ll be right back.”

He watches Dib go, his energy fading, his focus drifting away. He can’t move, can’t breathe. His side is bleeding profusely and the electric shock he’d taken was shutting his system down. He didn’t have ten minutes to get his PAK from Dib. He barely had a minute. He needed it, _now_. 

“Dib,” he tries, watching as his human sprints for the PAK.

His eyes close, and he thinks of Dib. Dib, who’ll be right back. Dib, who will take care of him, and they’ll be okay, they’re always okay, they’ll be together in just a moment—

Dib’s screaming his name again, and he uses the last of his strength to turn his head and watch as Dib flies away from him, holding his PAK, tears coursing down his face. 

He watches Dib go and is thankful that at least he’s safe. There would be no saving Dib if he died on this planet.

Everything goes white. 

Dib jolts upright, his heart pounding. His face is soaked with sweat and tears. The PAK attached to his chest buzzes. He grips the armrests and gasps. 

**iii.**

A week after Dib wakes up with the PAK attached to him, he finally gives in and calls Tak.

“Agent Dib,” says Tak, one eye squinting.

“Tak,” Dib says. “I needed to talk to you.”

“Lard Nar tells me you’ve gotten yourself stuck to Zim’s PAK.”

Dib grits his teeth and digs his fingernails into his palms. He tries to remain composed as Tak’s image watches him carefully.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Tak’s eyes trail downward, her gaze landing on the bulge underneath Dib’s t-shirt. She purses her lips.

“What do you want me to say?” she asks.

“I’d like you to explain what’s happening to me, please,” tries Dib. 

Tak snorts.

“How should I know? Do you think I have any idea why that’s happening?”

“You’re an irken,” Dib says. “Weren’t you given, like, all of Irken knowledge right when you were born? Don’t you know anything about PAKs?”

“I know everything about PAKs,” Tak snips. “Which is why I have no idea what to tell you. PAKs don’t do that — they don’t… _connect_ to the life forms that they weren’t meant for. Once a PAK attaches to its master, it stays that way unless it gets re-encoded. You didn’t mess with the coding, did you?”

“No!” says Dib. “All I did was lie down and hold it!”

Tak shakes her head in disbelief. “There’s no reason for that to be happening, then.”

She gives Dib another calculating look, which Dib instantly resents.

“If you’re going to tell me you think I did this to myself, I don’t want to hear it,” he growls. “Lard Nar already thinks I’m crazy, as if I’d… as if I’d put myself through… whatever this is.”

Tak’s brow raises. “And what exactly are you being put through, then?” she asks.

“I don’t sleep anymore,” says Dib. “I don’t eat. I—”

“If I recall correctly, you haven’t been doing that, anyway,” says Tak, in a voice that, for Tak, is somewhat sympathetic.

“It’s worse now,” Dib presses. “I literally do not sleep. At all! And I’m eating… I can eat, I guess, but I don’t need to. I went three days without eating or drinking water and I didn’t even notice, and I didn’t lose a pound! I wasn’t even thirsty!” 

Tak’s arms fold. “Dib, you need medical attention.”

“I know that!” says Dib. “I just… I don’t think this is what Lard Nar thinks. I don’t think this is just… me missing Zim. A few days ago, I had this, like.. I had this dream… that I was Zim. When he died. I dreamt that I was back on Moo-Ping 10, and it was the last… it was when he died. But I wasn’t _me_. I was _him_.”

Tak just watches Dib, looking like she’s thinking about something. “But, you do miss Zim.”

“Of course I do,” says Dib. “I—” 

“_Hellooooo_!” 

A little robot descends from the bedroom on the elevator pad. He waves excitedly at Tak. He’s too excited, and his manic waving causes him to fall off the elevator pad and crash to the floor.

“Shit!” Dib scrambles to pick him up. “GIR, I just got your legs working again. Do you want to break them?”

GIR giggles and kicks his legs against the PAK, sending an uncomfortable reverberation through Dib’s chest. “Sorry, Master!”

“I’m not…” Dib’s throat catches, and he drops GIR onto the dashboard. “I’m not your master, GIR.”

“If you say so!”

When Dib looks back at Tak, she’s staring at him, incredulous. 

“You can’t eat or sleep,” she says, “but you fixed his SIR unit?”

“Not all the way. I stopped for some parts a couple of days ago and, I… I just…” Dib shakes his head. “I had to.”

Tak is staring at him.

“What?”

“I don’t…” Tak, for the first time since Dib’s gotten to know her, looks uncomfortable. “Dib, I don’t think this is a problem with the PAK. You’re… you’re dreaming of the day Zim died, and you’re fixing his SIR unit, and you’re unable to perform basic human bodily functions…”

She looks at Dib like she’s just realized something. Dib grits his teeth.

“I get it,” he says. “Okay? I miss him… so much. I miss him like crazy. But I can’t— this isn’t how humans mourn. We don’t just suddenly lose the ability to sleep, or the need to eat.”

“It’s only been a couple of weeks,” says Tak. “Perhaps, after some more time, you’ll feel better.”

Dib narrows his eyes. “Tak, I called _you _because _you’re _the one who knows about PAKs. If I wanted more bullshit, I would have called Nar again.” 

Tak sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe the research team will figure it out, once they get it off you.”

“What are they gonna do to it?” Dib asks. 

“They’ll take it apart,” says Tak with a shrug. “Most likely, they’ll disassemble it, and then—”

_NO!_

“No!” shouts Dib. 

Tak’s eyes widen.

“They can’t take it apart!” Dib holds his hand to the PAK. “This is _Zim’s_!”

“Not anymore, it’s not,” says Tak. “Especially not if it’s attached itself to you.”

“How do you know?”

“Isn’t that why you called me?”

Dib begins to pace.

“Tak, if this is unprecedented, then—”

_Dib!_

“What?”

Tak looks startled. “What?”

“You just said my name.”

Tak draws back. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you just—”

_DIB!_  


“_What_?” 

“What is going on?” asks Tak. “I’m not saying anything!” 

“I can’t— I was hearing, before—” Dib turns to Tak. “I keep hearing my name.”

Tak stares at him. 

“And then,” Dib goes on, “I was also hearing my name, and hearing other stuff, I, uh, I think, and… it’s been a while, not since when it first happened, but I’m hearing it right now, again, and—”

Dib is overwhelmed with exhaustion. He nearly stumbles to the floor.

“Dib,” says Tak. “Perhaps you are… too upset to be alone. I’ll come back to your ship and bring you to HQ.”

_No!_

“No, I don’t…” Dib gulps. “I don’t need you to. I have GIR.”

Tak’s left antenna perks and she looks at GIR again. Dib feels everything start to go black.

“I have to go,” he says to Tak. “I need… I need to go to sleep.”

“Dib,” Tak says, her voice stern. “You need medical help, now. Get your ass to a med bay as soon as you can.”

_DIB!!_

“I have to go,” Dib says again, barely dragging himself to the dashboard. 

He signs off the call and falls onto the floor of the cockpit, out cold. 

Everywhere he looks, he sees carnage. He’s unaffected.

The air is acidic with smoke and the discharge from fired laser beams, and the sun is bright, white and hot against the red rock of the barren desert. He can barely breathe, but his PAK keeps him alive, as much as it needs to. 

He’s been here for what feels like years, fighting on the front lines for his Tallest. He blasts away inferior aliens alongside the other smallers. He tries to kill more than they do, to take more lives, to demonstrate his undying love for his leaders better than anyone else.

The sounds of screams fill the air, Irken and alien. All around him, irkens less agile than he is fall to the ground, only to rise moments later, their PAKs glowing green and their eyes glassy. He remembers the feeling of recovery after a fatal shot — his body waking up before his mind, his PAK taking over to obey the Tallest, even as his unconscious brain still thinks it’s dying. It gives him shivers just to think about it, keeps him up at night, makes him feel like he’s more of a machine than a person. 

But, he is, he reminds himself. Expendable and loyal, unthinking, is all he is. 

He swallows the thought and charges forward — against orders, but who cares? — taking out alien after alien.

Commander Poki stands alongside him and shoots him a wary look among the chaos. It costs her dearly, and she’s thrown to the ground. It’s an unlucky fall, and her PAK snaps off its outlet and skitters away.

“PAK!” Poki screams, and Zim leaps for it. 

When he turns around, Poki’s body is being torn apart by one of the aliens’ primitive war beasts. He stares for a moment, his body rigid.

“Private!” 

A lieutenant grabs his shoulder and whirls him around.

“Get that PAK to the corporal!” 

He blinks. Corporal. Of course. Poki isn’t dead, her PAK’s right here. He scurries back into the mass of irkens, sprints from the front lines to the transport station and jumps to the pad. He smacks a hand down and then feels his body breaking into tiny particles and then flying upward.

He reaches the transport room, Poki’s PAK still in his arms. An officer standing at the transport desk regards him with a sneer.

“Defecting, drone?”

“Commander Poki’s body has been compromised!” he shouts over the officer. “She needs to be re-corporealized!” 

The officer stares at him for a moment, then calls for another drone to come retrieve the commander’s PAK. The drone takes it and is instructed to take an escape pod and return to Devastis, to the Body Chamber, where a waiting corporal will make her a new form. The drone nods and flees the room. 

He watches the drone go and stands with his hands empty. The officer shoves him back on the transporter pad and tells him to get back to work.

Dib wakes up, this time curled in a ball on the floor of the cockpit. He gasps and sits up, so fast that his head swims. He inhales the manufactured oxygen of his ship in hard pants and stares at the floor. He feels like his brain is recalibrating, and it’s making him dizzy and nauseated.

“What the fuck?” Dib whispers, his hands shaking. “What the fuck was that?” 

_Dib!_

Dib grits his teeth and shuts his eyes.

“Whatever this is, I can’t handle it!” he cries. “Stop it! I’m gonna lose my mind!”

_Dib!_

“WHAT!” Dib bellows. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”

A pause. The cockpit is silent.

_I want my body back, you bastard!_

Dib freezes. The hair on the back of his neck stands up. 

“Zim?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Is that… is this actually you? You’re alive?”

Another pause, and then a shout so loud that it reverberates through Dib’s entire body.

_FINALLY!!_

Dib takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes. He takes another deep breath, in through his nose and then out through his mouth. 

“Okay,” he says. “So, you’re—”

_What the hell were you thinking? You can’t give them my PAK! They’ll ruin it! It’s perfect as it is, and if you give it up for them to dissect, I swear I’ll… I’ll haunt you!! I’ll find you and haunt you!_

“Woah.” 

The sound of Zim’s voice, amplified and too close made Dib’s face start sweating again. 

“Okay, Zim,” he says, and just saying that, talking to _Zim_, his best friend in the universe whom he’d watched die less than a month ago, was just… 

He started laughing. “Oh, my god,” he says. “I’m losing my fucking mind.”

_Are you listening to me?_

“Yes, Zim. I’m listening.”

_And another thing! I told you not to go back for that thing! And now look at me! You got me de-corporealized!_

“De-… what?”

_And now, I’m stuck here, in your stupid, fleshy human body which smells of FILTH!_

“Hey now, I didn’t realize you were here, or I would have showered.”

His face is in flames again, and Dib realizes that… whatever _this _is, this reaction, it isn’t his.

“Is that embarrassing you?” he asks. 

_NO, it is not EMBARRASSING me! _

Dib fights the urge to antagonize Zim. He refocuses.

“Zim,” he says softly. “What’s happening? Tak said—”

_Tak doesn’t know what she’s talking about!_

“Can you… explain it to me, then? I thought PAKs only worked for one person. Why did yours attach to me?”

There’s a silence in Dib’s head.

“Zim? How come I can hear you? What… what is this? What are we?”

More silence. Dib purses his lips.

_I don’t know._

Dib’s eyes go wide.

“You don’t?”

_I don’t… all I know is, I was dying, and then I heard my name._

“What?”

_You. You were… thinking of me._

Dib takes a shaking breath. He remembers the night that Zim’s PAK attached to him, how he tried to stop thinking about Zim but just couldn’t.

“I missed you,” Dib says. 

…_You did?_

“Of course I did,” Dib says. “I… I’m sorry, Zim. I’m sorry for what happened. It was all my fault.”

There’s another long pause.

_I accept your apology._

To his surprise, Dib feels tears prick at his eyes.

“I didn’t think I’d ever talk to you again,” he says, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping himself around the PAK. “I thought you were gone forever.” 

A tear falls onto the back of Dib’s hand, and he watches it flow toward his knuckles and between his ring and pinky finger. 

_I’m here_. 

Dib chokes on a sob. Without really knowing what he’s doing, he wraps his arms around himself and squeezes. He feels Zim laugh softly in his head and he laughs brokenly in response. GIR leaps onto his shoulder and wraps his little robot arms around Dib’s head.

“What do we do now?” he murmurs.

_We go to Devastis._


	2. Heart

**i.**

Devastis used to be an Irken training planet, abandoned when the Resisty’s occupation spread and the Empire’s armies were forced to retreat. Dib can hardly remember how they’d left Devastis after all that fighting. He and Zim were there the day the planet was captured by the Resisty, and he remembers plenty of violence, mayhem, and disaster. He didn’t remember many buildings left standing.

Zim alleges that the Body Chambers were tucked below ground, a secret that the Irken military kept, even before the day they turned on their allies and started colonizing. He insists that they’re still there: dormant, unused, waiting.

Dib isn’t so sure, but this is the only chance they’ve got to attach Zim’s PAK to a new body. Otherwise, they’ll stay sharing Dib’s body forever. 

That really isn’t an option.

Dib wakes up by slamming his head against the ceiling of his bunk. Again.

“Seriously?” he grumbles.

_Sorry_, comes the sarcastic reply. _It’s hard getting used to having such a big head._

Dib rolls his eyes and rubs at his forehead. “More like, hard getting used to actually being tall.”

_Well, excuuuse me. We can’t all by giant ape-monkey-people, roaming the galaxies with huge, enormous heads and stupid long legs!_

Dib scoots out of bed and drags himself to the bathroom, GIR tottering along next to him on unsteady legs, then predictably falling off the elevator pad again. A spear of concern slices through Dib, and all he can do is sigh.

He scoops up GIR and walks him into the bathroom, then plops him on the sink's counter. He pauses to look at his face in the mirror, still fascinated as he watches the bruise on his forehead fade into nothing, even if he’s already seen it a few times, even if he’s watched Zim get healed by the PAK hundreds of times. He feels something from Zim at that, but he’s not sure what. He doesn’t say exactly what he’s thinking, but, somehow, it feels like he’s bragging.

When Dib sneaks a glance at the shower, the dance begins. 

He gets his t-shirt off no problem. When he reaches for the tightly-knotted drawstring of his bigfoot-print pajama pants, things get tense. He feels his face heat up again, and his fingers start to fumble, clumsily brushing against the knot without actually untying it.

“I need to get my pants off, Zim.”

_What if we skipped the shower this morning?_

“When we skip the shower, you complain that I smell.”

_Just sweat less._

“I can’t,” Dib grumbles. “I have an alien parasite that’s making my body work against me and fighting my natural internal temperature.”

Zim doesn’t say anything, but Dib feels the frown.

“What?”

_I can’t believe you just called me a parasite._

“What else would I call you?”

Another pause, and it feels like Zim’s pouting. Dib seizes the opportunity to untie the drawstring before Zim notices. He pulls his pants down, but Zim yanks them back up just as quickly. 

_Just turn down the thermostat._

“I already turned it down. If I turn it down any more, pipes are going to start freezing.”

_That’s not true. Just turn it down a little more._

“I’m not going to sit in my own ship, freezing my ass off and busting the pipes just because you can’t stand seeing me naked.”

_It’s not my fault your body is so… gross. _

Dib rolls his eyes. The fighting continues, although eventually Dib is able to take a very fast and not at all thorough shower, his head snapping to the side every time he so much as thinks about looking down. He gives up and gets out once he gets the soap of out of his hair and then spastically towels himself off.

“Can’t you just… turn it off, for a second?” he asks. “Like, just ignore what I’m doing?”

_I can’t._

“Why not?”

_Because I’m occupying YOUR body! I can’t just not pay attention._

“Why don’t you try,” says Dib as he squirts some toothpaste onto his toothbrush. “Just, you know, try to go be somewhere else.” 

Zim grumbles something about having nowhere else to go, then adds: _If I really WERE a parasite, I would have eaten all your organs by now._

“Seriously? You’re still mad about that?” 

The pouting continues.

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry I called you a parasite. Clearly, you aren’t, even though you’re completely fucking with my body and not even letting me shower.”

_I do not accept your apology._

“Well, fine then. Just go do something else and leave me alone for a second.”

The fist holding his toothpaste clenches, getting it everywhere. Dib wants to scream.

He cleans up the mess and starts brushing his teeth. In the meantime, he feels Zim flitting around in his mind like a bored office worker flipping through a filing cabinet. He nearly gags on his toothbrush when he’s abruptly jolted into the memory of losing his first tooth.

_Hmm… what’s this?_

Dib spits into the sink and looks at himself in the mirror. “It’s a memory. How did you find that?”

_I was looking at your teeth-related things. I forgot that human teeth fall out._

“My… teeth-related things?” Dib asks.

_Yeah, like the stuff you have about teeth. All of the little ones fall out?_

"Yeah, they do,” says Dib with a roll of his eyes. “Now, can you—”

He’s rammed with another memory, this one of being in pre-skool and falling off the monkey bars.

_Wow, there’s a lot of cool stuff in here_. 

“Quit it!” Dib grunts. “Leave my memories alone.”

Another hard jolt forward, and this time his little sister is slapping him across the face. 

_What else is there?_

Zim rolls through his memories so fast, Dib can barely keep up. He’s running in gym class, he’s reading a magazine article about the Loch Ness Monster, he’s sitting alone on the skool bus, watching as the other kids talk and laugh with each other—

“Stop touching my shit!” Dib snaps, watching his reflection as his brows draw and his jaw clenches. His face flushes pink at the last memory and his fists clench.

_You TOLD me to—!_

“I didn’t say to invade my privacy!” Dib shouts at the mirror.

“Well, what do you want me to do, then, Dib-beast?” he shouts back at himself.

Dib freezes, and his eyes go so wide, they look like they’re about to fall out of his head.

Inside his mind, he can tell that Zim’s frozen, too.

“What the fuck did you just do.”

_I don’t know! It wasn’t on purpose!_

Dib fixes himself with a hard stare. “Don’t ever do that again. Don’t just… take over like that.”

_I said I didn’t mean to! I don’t even know how it happened._

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Zim.”

Every day, Dib is unfathomably grateful for having Zim back in his life. And, every day, Zim tests that gratefulness just a little bit more. It’s been almost a week, and Dib thinks that he’s about to explode. 

They walk to the cockpit, GIR still in tow, still unable to do much but walk and sometimes share a comment or two. 

They settle down in the pilot’s seat and Dib takes the yoke. Still about two and a half weeks away from Devastis, and Dib thinks his head might just erupt. He lets his fingers tap against the hard rubber of the yoke while he slips into thought. For a single second, he lets himself imagine how perfect it’ll be if this all works out: Zim, by his side again, not having to go to HQ, not having to get a new partner, just going right back to exactly how things were before. 

_No, thanks._

Dib’s fingers still.

“What do you mean, ‘no, thanks’?” he asks.

_In case you didn’t notice, Dib-creature, I literally DIED saving you after you — once again — refused to listen to me. Do you really think I’d go back to being your partner after that? _

Dib’s heart begins to pound in his chest. “What, so, you’re just gonna… you’re just gonna go work with someone else?”

_I thought I might. Maybe I’ll work with Tak._

“You don’t even _like_ Tak!”

_I like her fine. She knows when to stay away from trouble, at least. I’m sure Lard Nar would authorize the transfer._

Dib head starts to ache again, and he frowns, feeling like he’s getting the rug pulled out from under him. 

“Zim, I… I really thought you were going to stay with me, once you got another body.”

_And risk going through all this again? I don’t think so._

“Zim—”

_You knew how I felt before we got to Moo-Ping 10. I told you it was dangerous and you ignored me. I can’t partner with someone who won’t even listen to me!_

“Wha—”

_When all this is over, I’m taking my GIR and I’m going to headquarters for a new partner and a new assignment. I suggest you do the same._

“But… Zim, you… you can’t just go… be with someone else! We’re partners! We’ve been partners for years! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

_Maybe it did before I literally died for you. Did it mean anything to YOU? _

“Of course it did! Zim, you can’t—”

_I believe it’s time I finally took my own advice and got a sense of self-preservation. I can get reassigned, and I will. And you can’t stop me._

“I said I was sorry!” Dib shouts. “You accepted my apology!”

_That doesn’t mean I have to resign myself to more of this! More of you, doing as you please, thinking only about yourself!_

“I’m not thinking of myself!” Dib fires back. “I’m thinking about all the fucking people in this universe that are suffering because of Irk! People who need my help!”

_And what about me?!_

“What _about_ you?” asks Dib, and he realizes as he’s saying it that it’s not what he means — it’s not that he doesn’t care about Zim, he does, but he just… he doesn’t understand why Zim is so personally offended by Dib’s trying to do the right thing. 

There’s a pause on Zim’s end. Dib takes a breath.

“I’m sorry, look, Zim, obviously I’m not… I’m not doing any of this to hurt you, and I don’t… I don’t want—”

_Shut up._

Dib ducks his head forward and presses his forehead against the yoke. He takes a deep breath.

_You can’t make me stay with you_, Zim says.

A sick thought twists into his head before he realizes, and he feels Zim react to it before he can.

_Don’t be ridiculous, Dib!_

“I wasn’t! I wouldn’t! It… it was just a thought!”

As Zim screams at him from inside his own head, the thought amplifies: staying on this ship, passing by Devastis, keeping Zim strapped to his chest and never looking back—

_How dare you! You can’t keep me prisoner here!_

“I _wouldn’t_!” Dib snaps. “You know I wouldn’t!”

_But you’d consider it! Before even considering listening to me, you’d consider trapping me here, in your own body?! Making the both of us miserable for the rest of your life?!_

“No!”

_How dare you!_

“YOU CAN’T LEAVE!” Dib cries. “I JUST GOT YOU BACK! YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME!”

There’s a silence, and it stretches on for an eternity. 

_I can and I will_. 

Dib feels his stomach drop, the finality clear as Zim’s final words on the matter echo from within Dib’s head.

_You shouldn’t be so upset, Dib. You were the one who told me to get a new partner if I wasn’t happy._

And then, no matter how much Dib begs him, Zim won’t say another word for the rest of the day. 

**ii.**

Another week passes, this one fraught with more arguing, more begging, and even more of the silent treatment. Dib continues to be baffled by how well Zim gives him the silent treatment — years ago, he never would have considered him so capable of shutting up for such a long time.

While Dib sleeps, he catches glimpses of a past that isn’t his — a disgusted look by a Taller, a piece of equipment that looks Irken, a joke from GIR. He asks Zim about it, and Zim has no idea what he’s talking about. He asks Zim about sending him memories, and Zim tells him he only sent him the memory of taking Commander Poki’s PAK to be brought to Devastis, because he’d hoped that it would help Dib get the picture. He, apparently, didn’t send Dib the memory of his death. 

Dib wants to explore this feat of science that feels like magic: an Irken PAK, still containing the downloaded personality of its master, bound to another life form so that two, somehow, become one. But Zim doesn’t really understand it either, apparently. And Tak doesn’t believe him.

Eventually, they get the call. Dib had been avoiding it, knowing that there was no way to convince Lard Nar that he was being kind of, sort of possessed by his late partner. But Lard Nar is furious with him, and Dib realizes that he can’t hide any more.

He answers, his own brain’s humming of anxiety harmonizing with a responding nervousness from Zim.

Lard Nar’s face appears on screen, and Dib knows that he’s in for it.

“Agent Dib,” says Lard Nar, his voice almost even and a touch louder than it needed to be. “Location report.”

Dib folds his hands nicely in his lap. “Quadrant two of the Qoppa Sector, sir, approximately five days from the quadrant three border.”

“I see,” says Lard Nar. His eyes close for a long time and he takes a deep breath. “And why, pray tell, are you in the Qoppa sector, when I have ordered you to go to headquarters?”

Dib sends Lard Nar his nicest smile. “I am going to Devastis.”

Lard Nar’s eyes narrow. “And _why_,” he grinds out, “_pray tell_, are you going to Devastis?”

_Tell him about the Body Chamber_, Zim whispers. _Tell him!_

“Sir,” says Dib, and he knows this game of faux formality is a dangerous one. He pushes through. “I had no intention of disobeying your orders. Certain circumstances, however, lead me to Devastis. I’m afraid I have no choice but to go.”

_Tell him about the memory I sent you!_

“Uh huh,” says Lard Nar. “Please illuminate, if you will. I’m afraid I’m having trouble understanding.”

_Tell him you can hear me!_

“Certainly,” says Dib, his brain groaning as it’s stretched in two different directions. “As you are aware, sir, I have a PAK attached to my body—”

“Oh, please, Dib!” Lard Nar snaps, his eyes narrowing. “Is that what this is about? You can’t just run away because you think you’ve gotten yourself stuck to that infernal machine!”

_Tell him about me! Tell him you can hear me!_

Dib takes a deep breath. “Well, sir, I know that this is unprecedented, but I—”

_Tell him!_

“I thought we’d given you enough time,” says Lard Nar, suddenly exasperated. “I thought, maybe, if I let him have a little freedom,” — _TELL HIM! —_ “he’d come to realize on his own that he was being ridiculous. Maybe,” — _TELL HIM!_ — “if I just leave him alone, he’ll move past this… this… _problem _of his, and” — _TELL HIM!_ — “he’d see” — _TELL HIM!_ — “that it’s in the best interest” — _TELL HIM! _— “of our entire organization” — _TELL HIM! _— “if he just does as he’s told” — _TELL HIM! _— “and _gets himself to headquarters_!”

Lard Nar is screaming at this point. Dib stands.

_TELL! HIM!_

“Captain, please!” he shouts. “I know this sounds impossible, but it’s happening. Zim is _here_! He isn’t dead!” Dib points to the PAK frantically “He’s in this PAK! I can hear his voice in my head!”

Lard Nar stares, disbelieving, at Dib. Dib’s head starts to ache.

_Tell him about the Body Chamber!_

“I said I knew it sounded impossible,” Dib adds weakly. “But there’s this… this place, on Devastis, where we can go. We can get Zim a new body, uh, I think.”

_Don’t say you think! Say you know!_

Lard Nar shakes his head. “If I cared less about your wellbeing, I might terminate your employment with the Resisty now,” he says. “The amount of… of rules I’ve let you bend, the amount of second chances I’ve given you… I’ve had enough, Dib. Get to headquarters, now.”

_No! Tell him! Tell him everything, now!_

“Sir, what’s happening, is… I, um, I think—” Dib puts a finger to his temple, his headache raging as Zim screams. “Um, hold on, I just…”

“That’s an order, Dib.”

Dib knows he’s losing this battle, and desperation gives way to disappointment. He looks down at his feet, trying to think of just one thing that he could say to convince Lard Nar. Then, without warning, he’s overtaken with an anger that feels — unlike his. It’s sharper, white hot, and it consumes him too fast, and his control slips so quickly that he barely feels himself get shoved aside.

“NO!” he screams, gripping the dashboard and frightening Lard Nar. “I won’t do it! You can’t make me!”

The words come flying out of his mouth, and he can’t hold them in. He isn’t doing this, he realizes. His stomach sinks with dread.

“I’m telling you, there is a Body Chamber on Devastis for de-corporealized irkens! I _know _there is! Ask Tak!”

“Dib,” says Lard Nar, drawing back, frightened. “Please, calm down. What you’re talking about, it doesn’t exist.”

“My commander was murdered in front of me, and I delivered her PAK to the corporal officer and she was back on the front lines in a matter of _days_! I watched her die and I saw her come back! Do not tell me that it doesn’t exist! You have no idea!”

Lard Nar is staring, slack-jawed. Dib feels somehow like he’s being pushed backwards, a small but strong hand pressing against his chest, even as he stands in the cockpit, still and alone. His consciousness loses its balance and falls backwards, watching his still-standing, still-shouting form, his planted feet, his hunched shoulders, his tense, rigid back.

“We are going to Devastis, and I will be re-corporealized, and I will return to headquarters only _then_, do you understand!? _Only then_!” 

“Dib—”

“_Stop calling me Dib! I am Zim! You’ll see!_”

At that, Dib summons enough power to clap a hand to his mouth. 

But the damage was done. 

Lard Nar says nothing for a moment. The cockpit is silent — even GIR is still, staring at Dib, his eyes wide. No one says anything for a moment.

“We are sending Agent Tak to your location,” says Lard Nar, “and you are coming to headquarters for an immediate psychological evaluation.”

“Captain…” Dib squeaks, the word muffled behind his hands.

“Signing off.” 

The cockpit goes silent as Lard Nar cuts the transmission. Dib stands, frozen, as the scene replays itself in his head.

Then, he’s overtaken by another fury. This time, it’s all his own.

“How _dare_ you do that to me!” he shouts. 

_You weren’t listening to me! I had to!_

“Do you know how insane I just sounded!?”

_I had no choice!_

“You could have kept your mouth shut!”

_You were saying it wrong!_

“Whatever, Zim!” Dib snaps, his whole body shaking with the overwhelming emotions of two feuding friends. “I can’t… I can’t do this with you!”

He’s exhausted, again. Housing two consciousnesses has Dib’s body all over the place: one second he feels the charge from the PAK coursing through his veins, and he thinks he's unstoppable, but the next moment, he’s spiraling, his legs hardly able to hold him up. He feels like this now, and he barely makes it to the bedroom before he collapses on Zim’s bunk and falls asleep. 

This time, he realizes he’s in a memory. He’s done this dance enough times that he recognizes it: the hard plastic of the seat he’s sitting on feels too real, the smell of cleaning chemicals and sick people is right inside his nostrils, and the bright lights above him are pounding into his head. He’s hunched forward, and his body is tired. He needs to get some rest, to close his eyes, at least, but he can’t.

He holds Dib’s limp hand in his own and waits.

Dib feels a tug of recognition at this memory. He stares at his own sleeping form: he’s wearing a hospital gown and has a thick, white bandage crossed over the left side of his face. He remembers the failed occupation of Vort that resulted in him almost losing an eye. That was years ago, so early on in their time as Resisty agents that he remembers being shocked to have gotten such an important assignment. He’d taken a risk that day and almost died because of it, but he’d turned and there was Zim, ready to blast everyone away if it meant saving him. 

It was the first time Zim had broken the rules to protect him.

He holds the memory-Dib’s hand, his own small, four-fingered grip unfamiliar. Dib is still asleep, and his vitals are improving, but he needs to _wake up_, now, to open his good eye and smile and talk and confirm what the medical officers have been saying for the past half of a day — that he’s fine, he’ll be fine, everything is going to be fine.

He feels Zim’s worry weighing heavily in his squeedilyspooch, his delayed fears, pushed aside for the sake of the mission, coming forth and lodging in his throat. Dib feels with growing incredulity as Zim becomes more and more emotional, wiping at a stray tear as he tries to imagine what he’d do if he didn’t have Dib.

He can’t think of anything. His powers of creativity come to a hard stop when he tries to imagine having any sort of life without Dib in it.

The dream-Dib starts to wake up, his face pinching as he comes to the surface and is acquainted with dull, thrumming pain. He’s moaning a little, and Dib — no, Zim — wants to reach forward and stroke along the sweaty strands of his hair—

“What are you doing here?!”

Dib turns to see that the curtain’s been drawn back, and there stands Zim, his eyes rimmed with redness and his Resisty uniform tattered and burnt. 

“I— what?”

“Get out!” Zim shouts, pulling him from the chair and pushing him through the opening of the curtain. “Get out, get out, get out! You’ll ruin it!”

Dib lets himself be shoved backward by Zim, who’s his height, exactly, in this strange memory-place. He stays, though, peeking through the curtain and watching Zim take his seat, take Dib’s hand, stroke his hair and gently coax him into waking.

“Ugh… Zim?” asks the dream-Dib, his eye opening slowly, searching instinctively for his partner.

“I’m here,” says Zim, his voice so soft, so gentle, it’s almost unrecognizable. “I’m here. It’s alright.” 

“What happened?” the dream-Dib asks. “I can’t— my eye—”

“It’s okay,” Zim says, his voice thick with emotion. “Everything is going to be okay.” 

Dib takes a step back and feels himself pulling away from the memory. His heart thuds.

“Zim,” he murmurs, uncertain if Zim can ever hear him, where he is right now. “I didn’t— I didn’t realize…”

He jolts awake, his face smashing against the ceiling of Zim’s bunk.

“Ow,” he mumbles.

_Stay out of there!_ Zim shouts. _Leave my memories alone!_

“Jeez, Zim, I’m sorry.”

_That’s not for you to see!_

Dib scrubs a hand across his face. “I was there, too. It’s not like it was some big secret.”

_I don’t care! Stay away!_

“God, fine,” says Dib.

He pulls himself out of Zim’s bunk, his head still throbbing and Zim’s voice still screaming in his head.

**iii.**

Zim is quiet for the next few days. Dib mulls over the memory he’d accidentally stumbled into during his nap — the tenderness Zim had felt for him, the dismay he felt at just the idea of losing him. Dib knows that Zim can hear him, can see as Dib replays the memory-of-a-memory in his head. Zim won’t say anything, though, so Dib keeps thinking, his anger toward Zim ebbing. He wonders what Zim thinks, how Zim feels, talking aloud in the parlor in his head while Zim’s consciousness sits on the couch with his arms folded, then crosses one leg over the other and glares out the window.

He’s always known that he and Zim were close, and he wouldn’t hesitate to say that Zim is his best, if not only, friend in the entire cosmos. But… he’d always thought that his tendency to throw himself into the line of fire was more of an inconvenience for Zim, more something that would just lead to them getting reprimanded when the mission was over and they were back on their ship, safe and sound. He’d never suspected that Zim would be so… emotional about Dib’s near-death experiences. Didn’t Zim know that everything would be fine, too? Especially in that dream, Dib was barely hurt — the worst that would have happened to Dib was that he would have lost that eye. What had made Zim so upset? 

They stop at a convenience station to pick up supplies when they’re near Devastis. Dib gets water, fuel, and other essentials, including more parts for GIR, whom he’s temporarily deactivated after re-breaking himself one too many times. Their last stop is for groceries, and, suddenly, Dib’s head is filled with chatter.

_Get those cookies I like,_ Zim says.

“Uh,” mutters Dib, “okay.” 

He wanders through the aisle, fingers tapping on the handlebar of the grocery cart. It’s the first thing Dib’s heard from Zim in days, but he doesn’t question it.

He reaches for a box of cookies, the soft kind with the thick frosting that basically just taste like sugar. 

_Not that kind!_

Dib pauses, his hand hovering over the box. He’s about to respond, but he realizes that he’s surrounded by strangers.

“These are the ones you like,” he whispers.

_Wrong color frosting!_

“It tastes the same,” murmurs Dib through his teeth.

_Get purple!_

Dib reaches for the purple-frosted ones and grabs a box. Abruptly, he feels some other force reach for a second box and throw it into the cart.

“Wha— stop it,” he hisses. 

_I also want candy._

“You can’t keep—”

Dib can only hang on as he’s dragged farther down the aisle to the rows of candy. His arm flails as he shoves it into the shelf and then pulls, dumping half the contents into his cart and the other half onto the floor.

“Cut it out!” Dib mutters. “You’re making a mess.” 

_I want zorka berry juice._

Dib feels like a marionette doll as his entire body is gracelessly jerked around. He stumbles as he’s turned back to the juice aisle.

“I said not to do that,” he whispers harshly, fighting as Zim reaches for a carton of the sour berry juice and tosses it into the cart.

_I want another_. 

Dib struggles, his stomach getting queasy and his heart thudding as he realizes he can’t fight Zim off as well as he thought he could.

“Stop it!” he growls.

"You stop it!" Zim growls back. 

Other patrons look over at him. He stops caring.

Zim reaches for another carton of juice. Dib fights as hard as he can, grabbing his bicep with his other hand and trying to push the carton back towards the shelf. 

Zim says nothing, but Dib can feel his arm fighting against him. 

“Stop it!” Dib barks again, and he reaches instead for his wrist and pushes it downward.

He spikes the carton into the tile floor of the grocery store, and pink juice goes everywhere.

Zim throws Dib’s fists into the air, shouts “My head is big!” and then screams.

They’re escorted out of the grocery store before they can even purchase anything. Dib is fuming.

“What the fuck was that about!” he shrieks, standing alone in the parking lot. 

_I just wanted juice_, says Zim, a mocking tone to his voice.

“Whatever you’re trying to pull, just stop it, okay? You have no idea how freaky it is to not even be able to control your own body.”

_Oh, I don’t? Perhaps you don’t know what it feels like to be trapped in someone else’s body, unable to do anything, because they got you blown up! Surely, now, you realize that it won’t always work out fine, as you say!_

“I’m sorry!” Dib shouts. “I’m sorry I got you killed, okay! You were right! It was stupid, and I was stupid, and I shouldn’t have expected everything to go perfectly! Okay?”

_It absolutely is NOT okay, because of YOU I am trapped in this smelly, disgusting, revolting body—_

“Will you shut up?!”

_—with your big, giant, grotesque head—_

“You know what? I’m sick of this!” Dib shouts, and he storms off — he can’t, really, because Zim is as much a part of him as his own consciousness at this point, so he can do nothing to escape Zim’s onslaught of insults.

“God, what is with you today?” Dib shouts. “What did I do?”

He instantly regrets asking.

_What did you do? How is that even a question? Where do I even begin?_

Zim proceeds to list every bad thing Dib’s ever done from the moment they met, and Dib breaks out into a run to get to the end of the parking lot where he’s left his ship. He boards through the back just as Zim gets into the second day they’d known each other, and he can’t take it any more.

“Shut up!” he shouts, throwing his hands over his ears.

Zim keeps going, babbling and yelling as Dib storms through the ship and into the cockpit. He's too worked up to fly, he realizes, so he pulls off his sweatshirt and t-shirt and desperately grabs for the PAK. He can’t pull it off, no matter how hard he tries, and by this time he’s sweating and he wants to scream as Zim keeps berating him.

“You know what? FINE!” Dib shouts. “Two can play at this game!”

He clenches his fists and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, exactly, or even where he’s going, but he closes his eyes and just wills himself into the place where he’s only been a handful of times. 

To his shock and surprise, though, when he opens his eyes, he’s somewhere else. 

Dib looks so angry with him. He can’t blame him, but he can’t really understand, either.

“I’m just saying,” says Dib, wiping at his face, “if you could just… respect my space, a little, please? I know this is probably really new for you, but you can’t just go around stealing and breaking my stuff.”

He rests his chin on his knees and peers at Dib, who sits on the other end of the couch in a t-shirt and boxers.

“And, you know, humans need to sleep,” Dib adds. “So waking me up at all hours of the night is also pretty uncool.” 

He consumes this information, which, he thinks, is all fairly new. Dib’s gaze travels from him to the video game console, which is still smoking. For the first time, he feels a twinge of guilt. It was just that the game was cheating him, and he didn't like how the final boss kept taunting him, and he hadn't really been thinking when he blasted it to pieces with a PAK laser. Dib gestures to the rubble.

“I mean, I’ve had that thing for, what? Like a month, maybe.”

Right. He’d bought it right before they left. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, hugging his legs closer to his chest.

Dib sighs and looks at him. “It’s okay, Zim,” he says. “It’s just… you’ve never really done this, have you?”

“Done what?”

Dib shrugs. “Lived with someone else?”

He has lived with someone else. He used to live with hundreds of someone elses, but it was never like this: they never had _stuff_ that they called their own. They never had anything but the PAKs on their backs. 

“Not like this,” he finally says with a shrug, and Dib puts a gentle hand on his back, right above his PAK. 

He looks over and Dib is giving him a searching look.

“You have,” he says.

“I guess,” Dib concedes with a shrug. “Kind of. Not like this.”

“What do you mean?”

Dib looks away. “I dunno. I guess, living with my dad and sister… felt like living alone a lot of the time. Most of the time.”

They sit in heavy, uncomfortable silence for a while.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks. 

Dib smiles a little.

“Nah,” he says. “As long as you replace my GSbox.” 

“I will,” he promises.

He feels a certain fondness then, something that occasionally comes when he realizes that he and Dib are moving into new territory. First into not-enemies, and then to friends, and then partners, and, now, roommates. Real-life roommates, just like on TV. Dib still seems a little angry, and he’d been furious when he'd come down half an hour ago to find Zim standing over the destroyed console. Still, he feels… good, he thinks about this next step they’re taking. He likes having Dib as a partner. He cares enough about him, he realizes, that he’ll make an effort. He’ll take care of Dib’s things, if it will make Dib happy.

And, maybe, he and Dib can learn how to live together, together. Maybe they can be good at this, too. 

The feeling of being forgiven gives him a certain lightness, and he revels in it for a moment: the chance to try again, something he never really got on Irk, sits patiently between himself and Dib.

Dib takes a step back from the memory and watches his younger self watch Zim with a soft, tired expression. He remembers feeling frustrated that night, pissed off that Zim would rage-quit a video game so hard that he’d destroy one of the few things Dib had brought from Earth. He hadn’t thought of this moment as a turning point at all.

But, he thinks, maybe it was. Zim had rebuilt the GSbox after this fight. He’d stopped stealing Dib’s snacks, although eventually they just started shopping for stuff together and splitting the cost down the middle. They’d learned how to work with and around each other. They’d developed routines and stupid jokes. He steps back in and wallows for a second in Zim’s memory and his feelings of surprised fondness for a tired, frustrated Dib.

_DIB! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!_

Shit. His curiosity piqued, Dib takes a running leap into the next memory he can find.

He’s lying on his back, his arms crossed behind his head and the desert air too dry, too hot.

Dib lies next to him, and he’s stripped off his jacket and is just wearing a grey undershirt and his blue Resisty uniform pants scrunched up to his knees. His face is dewy with sweat, but he doesn’t seem to mind. At least, he doesn’t complain about it. Dib watches the night sky, so he lets his gaze linger over Dib’s face, his arms, his human torso and legs. He thinks, not for the first time, about how big Dib’s gotten since they first met. He hadn’t grown at all, but Dib had spent all of hi skool growing. Dib still looked young, though — still had long, unkempt hair, a soft, boyish face, and a voice that occasionally cracked when he got excited. But he would probably grow out of all of that, soon, too.

“This is so _booooriiiing_,” Dib says eventually, stretching the word out like Earth taffy.

He looks back up at the sky, where they’re waiting for the sun to rise so they can go back to collecting samples of the day-blooming flower that, apparently, had a pollen which could be mixed with other agents to create a chemical that could paralyze irkens and slow the functions of their PAKs. Secretly, he thinks that this is more of a test of their survival skills than an actual, important assignment.

“Lard Nar said we would have to pay our dues,” he responds.

“Yeah, no, I know,” says Dib with a sigh, his eyes still watching the sky. “I’m just saying, it’s boring.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I know.”

He looks back to the sky just in time to see a flicker cross the horizon.

“Hey,” he says, “did you see that?”

Dib sits up on his elbows. “Spaceship?”

“Meteor?”

There’s another flicker, and then another. Dib gets excited, sitting upright all the way and deciding that it’s a meteor shower. 

He sits up, too. 

“You know,” Dib says, “I think this is the longest time we’ve actually spent on a planet since we left Earth.” 

He’s right. They’ve only been with the Resisty for a couple of months, and most of that time has been spent on one station or another, getting trained, or sitting in their fixed-up spaceship, going from assignment to assignment. But, they’ve been here for almost three long days, searching for this stupid flower, with nothing but the other for company.

“Huh,” is all he says, because he’s caught up thinking, now.

“You know,” says Dib, “I kinda thought that we’d suck at being partners, for a second there. Just because, you know, we have such a history. But this has been literally one of the most boring things I’ve ever had to do, and, you know? It’s also honestly been kinda fun.”

“Kinda fun?” he echoes. “Wow, thanks.”

Dib snickers. “Ok, it’s pretty fun. That’s all you’re getting.”

He reaches over and gives Dib a shove. Dib shoves him back with a laugh, and he realizes, for one moment, how much he likes hearing Dib laugh.

Dib lets himself wallow for a second, feeling and watching as himself and Zim make jokes and laugh and keep each other entertained. What happened, between then and now? When did they go from being like this to being at each other’s throats, to not talking through their issues, to fighting all the time? When did they get to the point where they needed Tak just to keep them in line? 

He feels sharp nails dig into his shoulder and takes off running.

He tries to jump into another memory again, but Zim’s right at his heels, and everything starts to blur around him.

He’s sitting on a bench at skool, eating a piece of candy that Dib had bought him at the gas station, biting through chewy caramel as Dib complains about wedgies or swirlies or something.

_“Zim, come on! You know this is so unfair!”_

Dib stumbles as he hears his own voice echo through his head. He finds another memory as soon as he can and stumbles into it. 

He’s in the locker room, surrounded by the other trainees: aliens who hate him and, worse, don’t trust him. Dib stands next to him and doesn’t even seem to notice. He points at his newly-developed, barely-there bicep muscle, flexing it and gloating, and he crosses his arms and tells Dib to get over himself. 

_“Zim, will you at least talk to me?” _

He’s playing a video game with Dib where he’s a character named Rosalina who is from space and a princess, but she’s driving a motorcycle and he’s trying to outrace a giant ape and a little computer character that Dib designed to look like himself and a whole bunch of other ridiculous-looking creatures. Dib sits next to him, and when he wins for the first time, Dib cheers him on. And then he feels a strange uneasiness at the sound of Dib, gleeful to lose if it meant that Zim won. 

_“It’s not fair for you to get mad at me and then not even talk to me about it.”_

He’s running, the air is heavy and thick with smoke, he’s trying to find Dib but Dib had disappeared an hour ago, and he is going to start blowing shit up if he couldn’t find Dib soon. He hears Spleenk shouting instructions at him through his headset, but he ignores them, too focused on finding Dib to care that he was disregarding orders.

_“I guess I never really worry about that.”_

He’s lying in his bunk, surrounded by other irkens but so, so alone. He feels it in his gut. Doubt. He rolls to the side and thinks of his Tallest, but, with every moment he tries to push away his feelings, a certainty creeps closer.

_“Isn’t that what makes us such a good team?”_

He’s sitting in the cockpit, waiting at the pilot’s seat. Dib and that strange alien from last night start to descend from upstairs. The alien is taller than him — taller than Dib, even — and he has six arms and one eye, and he has two hands in Dib’s hair and two on his ass and one on his back and one on his bare chest as they descend down toward the storage level, and Dib pulls away from the alien for a moment to give Zim a “one second” gesture before letting himself be pulled back in. He watches and listens to them kissing as they descend into the storage level, and moments later Dib reappears, his mouth swollen and his eyes grinning. Dib squeezes his shoulder and tells him he owes him one for letting him have the bedroom for the night, and he tells Dib to go put something on, he isn’t even wearing anything over his underwear. Dib laughs and says he’ll be right back. His face burns with embarrassed, jealous rage. He can hear Dib pulling drawers open upstairs and everything feels cosmically unfair.

_“I guess… I don’t know.”_

He’s drunk off his ass and lying on their couch, his head on the armrest and his feet in Dib’s lap. Dib sits next to him, laughing hysterically and taking swigs from a bottle filled with that sour pink alcohol that was making his brain fuzzy and his teeth numb. Dib readjusts their position so he can flop on top of him, and then Dib moves again so his chin is on Zim’s chest, and his eyes are practically dancing, and Zim forgets what he was laughing about but he looks at Dib’s smiling face and keeps laughing, anyway.

_“I never really thought about what we’d do after.”_

Dib feels himself pause at that one, and then Zim’s on him again. He gets booted from Zim’s PAK but boomerangs himself back in, his mind racing with a thousand questions at once. He’s in the next memory for only a second — 

Dib’s sitting on his roof, and he’s been quiet for a long time, but then he finally just stand up and says, “Fuck it! Let’s just do it! Let’s join the Resisty!” 

He takes Dib’s outstretched hand, and they promise to be partners, and they’ll fight side by side until the entire Empire is nothing but a memory.

_“Well, what do _you _want?”_

He’s standing in the cockpit, and his throat hurts from shouting and he realizes he’s angry, and Dib is looking at him, looking just as furious. 

“Why can’t you just stick to a plan for once in your life?” he asks.

“Because that plan was stupid and I came up with a better one!”

“Without telling me? When we’d already started the mission?”

“Uh, yeah! Obviously! Why is that such a big deal? You never got this mad about it before!”

He storms off, and Dib shouts at his back that walking away won’t solve anything, but it’s all he can do. He’s tired of having this same discussion with Dib, and he’s tired of having to look Dib in the face and watch Dib completely disregard his feelings on the matter.

He shoots a glare back at Dib and tells him he needs to grow up, and Dib shouts back that he’s just trying to do what’s best for everyone.

He takes the elevator pad upward, thinking that everyone must not include the two of them. A part of him wants to turn around and keep shouting, but another part prods at his side, worried that he’ll let it slip if Dib keeps doing this, if he keeps asking questions that he won’t like the answers to. 

Dib feels the tug again, but he tries linger, to listen to Zim’s own inner monologue which sounds like frustration, and anger, but also… heartbreak?

“Zim?” he says, and this time his voice is shaking a little as he pauses. He finds himself putting the pieces together. “Do you—?”

He’s jolted out of the memory again and dives forward, to curious and too certain now to leave his hypothesis behind. 

Zim keeps chasing him, and he dives in and out of memories of the two of them, fighting off irkens, goofing around in the cockpit, getting groceries, playing silly games, bickering with each other, shouting at each other. He feels disoriented the more times he jumps between memories. Eventually, he thinks that Zim has him, but he takes one more leap of faith and just hopes he can get an answer to the theory that’s taking shape in his head. 

He doesn’t know where he is. Somewhere, he can hear Zim’s frustrated screams, but they start to fade as the world around him begin to settle. He’s in a bed, not like their bunks, but also not like any other place he’s been since he left Earth. The bed is cozy and warm, and the mattress is soft. He thinks this might be a memory from before he met Zim, but he can’t imagine a time when Zim would have been like this: lying on his back in a bed just for him, comfortable and content and still a little sleepy. Zim didn’t live like that on Irk, or Foodcourtia, or Earth. No, this can’t be from before they’d met each other. So, where was he? When had this happened?

He’s shocked to turn his head and find another person in bed with him, turned with their bare back to him. Who was this? he wonders. When had Zim stayed over with someone? Why hadn’t he told Dib? More importantly, who _was_ this? 

He blinks in surprise and the image sharpens, and he realizes that the sleeping form is his own; he recognizes his hair, the color of his skin, the scar that starts above his clavicle and runs over his shoulder and down his left shoulder blade. 

But, they’d never shared a bed together, like this. Through the window past the sleeping Dib, he sees the outside world: it’s bright, and they’re not far from a beach with pink sand and periwinkle waves. This isn’t Earth, he notices, and they’re not in their ship. None of the training planets they lived on had beaches like this one, with soft-looking sand and bright, sweet-looking fruits hanging from tall, leafy trees. So, where are they?

He looks around. The edges of his vision are blurred, and the colors around him feel surreal — too soft, too warm, like a peachy glow is emanating from a hundred different points in the room. The room they’re in reminds Dib of an Earth hotel, with the big bed in the middle of the wall and tall windows all around him. He looks around some more and sees his sleeping self turn towards him, and he reaches forward to place a gentle hand on the Dib’s face. He feels full to the point of bursting with a sensation of affection and joy, and, as the Dib in front of him sleeps, he tries desperately to place where they are, what they’re doing, because he doesn’t remember this.

The sleeping Dib wakes up smiling and places his hand over Zim’s. Dib realizes that his hand — Zim’s hand — is ungloved, and he can’t remember a time when he’d seen Zim without his gloves. He shifts closer to Dib, and, as the sheets rustle around him, he comes to the alarming conclusion that he’s naked.

Dib feels Zim's distant screaming behind him just as he realizes this isn’t a memory. It’s a fantasy.

He holds the fantasy-Dib close and then rolls on top of him. The fantasy-Dib, he realizes, is naked, too, and then they’re kissing, softly and slowly, pressing against each other with the unhurried ease of two people in no rush whatsoever. He opens his eyes and looks at his own face as the colors around them ebb and flow, but the hues are always soft, reminding Dib of the first light of morning, rosy and golden and warm.

The fantasy-Dib holds him around his back, just under his PAK.

“What do you want to do today?” he asks, his voice deep and scratchy, just as Dib’s real voice is first thing in the morning. His eyes practically glow with joy.

“Whatever you want,” he responds, Zim’s voice coming out of his mouth low and raspy, too. The fantasy-Dib smiles wider.

“Maybe do some exploring?” the fantasy-Dib asks. “You could show me around?”

“Okay,” he says, and he feels giddy at the thought of showing Dib a new place, of getting to spend as much time as he wanted with no commitments, no one to answer to—

Dib feels his heart sink as he realizes what this is a fantasy of: their life after the Resisty. 

What they’ll do, when the war is over.

“I love you,” says the fantasy-Dib, and Dib wants to cry with how much his own joy swells, how this — Zim’s fantasy, his greatest, most perfect wish — is for them to be together, happy and safe and, apparently, in love.

“I love you, too,” he says, and he doesn’t even try to stop it as Zim yanks him from the fantasy and flings him back into reality.

Dib stands in the middle of the cockpit, his hands shaking. His head is aching, and his heart is beating fast, and the PAK on his chest feels boiling hot against his skin.

“Zim?” he asks quietly.

There’s silence, and Dib feels a sudden sense of despair. 

Why had he done that? How could he do that? He’d yelled at Zim for taking over his body, and then he just turned around and did something worse? He invaded Zim’s privacy, his thoughts, his reactions, his feelings.

His dreams, his wishes, his wants. 

“Zim,” he repeats. “Look, that was messed up of me. I know I crossed a line I was just… I was pissed off, okay? I’m really sorry, look, just…”

He trails off, not knowing what he can add to make this better.

“I know I fucked up. Will you please just say something?”

He can’t hear anything in his head, but the headache is thudding against his skull, and he sits down and presses his fingers to his temple. 

“Shit. I’m sorry,” he repeats. “That wasn’t… that wasn’t cool of me to look at your thoughts like that, okay? I thought it was a memory, and I just… I… I don’t know, okay? I’m really sorry, though. I didn’t mean to.”

He draws his knees up to his chin and hugs himself. His mind drifts back to everything he’d seen. “I didn’t… I didn’t know. I didn’t know how you felt, alright? I just… I didn’t think about you, like… taking care of me. I know that was stupid. I just… I didn’t realize how much it was hurting you, for me to put myself in trouble like that. I guess… I don’t know what I thought, okay? I didn’t realize how you felt. I didn’t listen when you told me because I thought… I don’t know what I thought, I guess. I thought you didn’t understand. But, I mean, I think I get it now. I was the one…”

He pauses, because he knows how much Zim likes to cut him off when he’s rambling.

“Come on, will you just talk to me? Please?”

He stares forward and waits, but he knows that Zim’s response won’t be coming any time soon. A feeling of dread trickles in as he wonders if the damage he’s done was permanent — did he ruin everything for them, for good? Was Zim really going to leave him and get a new partner? Would Zim even talk to him, ever, after this?

He hugs himself tighter and desperately tries to reach out again, to find some way to prod Zim’s conscious mind into talking. But, it’s like Zim isn’t even in the parlor any more. Wherever he is, Dib can’t find him.

“Zim,” he asks softly, his voice shaking, “are you in love with me?”

Zim doesn’t respond to that, either. Dib waits anyway, hoping against hope that, somehow, Zim would find one last ounce of patience and reach back out. Zim doesn’t, though, and he must be so unbelievably angry with Dib, and Dib can’t blame him. He thinks back on all of Zim’s memories, on how Zim must have had feelings for him for months, and maybe even years— 

Dib closes his eyes and just thinks: _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ over and over again. He waits, but Zim gives him nothing. Eventually, he just gets up and gets ready to take off for Devastis. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!


	3. Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're done! Thanks to everyone for joining me on this short journey into the world of PAK lore and pining. Enjoy the final chapter!
> 
> \- Andy

**i. **

Dib takes one last look through all the work he had done over the past few hours. He thinks that there isn’t much else he can do but try, and if it works, it works.

Zim must be so furious with him. He hasn’t said anything in days.

Even now, as Dib closes GIR’s chest panel and prepares to re-activate him, Zim is silent. He wonders if Zim even knows about all the work he’s put into fixing GIR since their fight. Does Zim still see through his eyes? Can he see how sorry Dib is, how hard he’s trying to make amends?

He shifts a bit in the pilot’s seat, uncomfortable.

Dib tries not to think about the things he felt when he was stealing through Zim’s memories, his fantasies. He wants to, badly, but he’s acutely aware of the fact that he’s renting a room of his brain out right now, and it’s not so much a room as a couch in the middle of everything, and every thought Dib has now is completely, painfully shared.

So, he tries not to think of things that might upset Zim, just in case Zim is still listening. And, personally, he can’t think of anything more upsetting to Zim than if he wallowed the days away considering whether or not Zim truly was in love with him, how long he’d been in love, and whether the feelings were reciprocated.

Dib couldn’t really imagine anything more humiliating than thinking out loud, with Zim right there, about any of that. Although — no! He shouldn’t say humiliating, because he doesn’t want Zim to feel humiliated. He mentally takes back the word, just in case Zim is listening. The parlor is deserted, has been for a while, but who’s to say that Zim isn’t on the other side of the door with his antennae pressed to the wall? 

Dib shakes his head. Fixing GIR helped take his mind off Zim, the way he’d felt when Dib had been hurt, the loyalty, the affection, the care, running so deep in such a way that Dib had never imagined for a person like Zim. 

Shit. Dib shakes his head again, as if that would erase the thought, make it like he’d never thought it and Zim never maybe-heard it.

He can’t wait until they get to Devastis. Except, he can, because what if the Body Chamber isn’t there? Or, worse, what if it is?

“Okay, GIR,” says Dib, pushing away his worries. “Let’s give this a shot.”

He re-activates GIR and watches his grey eyes and chest panel glow red and then teal. GIR sits up.

“Hey, buddy,” says Dib. “You feelin’ okay?” 

GIR turns his head around three hundred and sixty degrees and then fixes his sight on Dib. His little robot mouth used to be scratched around the corners, but Dib had fixed that, buffed the scratches out even though he knew that the next time GIR gorged himself on steel wool or nuts and bolts or something, he’d get himself all scratched up again. Dib didn’t care. He’d buffed all the scratches out of GIR’s small body. He’d oiled GIR’s joints and cleaned the gunk and cobwebs out of his brain. He’s fixed the dents and removed the rust. He’d done little else in the past few days but stand over the bathroom sink, cleaning and then buffing and then polishing until GIR was as clean as he’d been when he was first activated. Probably cleaner, to be honest. 

Besides that, he’d wiped GIR clear of the bugs that were ailing him, fixed his little robot nervous system so his legs and arms worked again, repaired his motor functions so that he could talk and sing and scream again. He’d considered going deeper, giving GIR the real repairs he’d need to make him a fully-functioning SIR. But, he didn’t think Zim would want that. Zim wanted _GIR_. 

So, Dib had given him GIR.

At least, he hopes so. 

GIR stares at him for a while longer, and Dib can hear the little motors in his body running as his system catches up to all the repairs Dib had made. His eyes glow terribly bright for a moment before dimming to a normal color again, and then he shakes his little head and turns to look at Dib.

“DIB!” he screams, leaping to his feet. “DANCE WITH ME!”

He leaps into the center of the cockpit and starts doing a little jig. Dib reaches over to the control panel and turns on some music, then he rests his elbows on his knees and watches GIR go.

He leans his chin against his hand and waits. After GIR’s favorite song — the theme to a TV show that he’d loved on Earth — loops the second, and then the third time, he closes his eyes.

“He’s all fixed,” he murmurs. “Ready for when you come back.”

GIR leaps around the room, his demeanor growing more and more excited as he realizes that his legs work, and his arms, and his rockets, and his robotic, high-pitched voice. Dib feels a flutter of affection in his chest, and then he sits his feet up on the seat of the pilot’s chair and rests his chin on his knees. He hugs himself, and the flutter disappears, replaced by a tiny, almost undetectable twinge of sadness. 

“Will you talk to me?” he whispers. “I can’t… I can’t just have it end like this. You can’t just… Zim, please.” His eyes are starting to water, and, with nothing to distract him, he feels all of his emotions come roaring back. “Please, just talk to me, this can’t just be it for us.”

Zim is silent, his PAK warm where it sits between Dib’s chest and thighs. Dib buries his face in his hands. 

**ii.**

They’re a day away from Devastis when Dib feels the nudge. It’s less like a nudge and more like a reluctant reach, as if Zim is asking him to dance but _really_ isn’t happy to be doing it. Dib takes the offer immediately, not caring that he’s in the middle of driving or that GIR, newly-restored and very excited about it, is practically bouncing off the walls and touching every button on the control panel that his short little robot arms can reach. 

When Dib takes Zim’s offered hand, he feels the pull away from the yoke, away from the physical, outside world. He’s lost for an instant and then, suddenly, he’s standing in the woods. 

Through the trees, he sees what looks like a clearing. He pushes through the branches and the brambles and follows the light. When he reaches the clearing, he looks around. It takes only a moment to realize where he is: the grassy knoll that overlooks his suburb, the best place in town to go if one wanted to watch the stars. He glances back at his old hometown, the lights twinkling as his former neighbors drifted from room to room, the streets lined with cars and bikes.

He turns back and realizes that a figure is standing in front of him, back facing him, arms crossed. It’s Zim.

“Hey,” says Dib softly. He pulls himself from the trees behind him and steps fully into the clearing. He stands next to Zim.

Zim stands just about at Dib’s shoulder, his back and antennae rigid, his entire body tense. Dib purses his lips and waits for the response.

“Hi,” says Zim, his tone haughty and his voice clipped.

“Uh,” says Dib. “Where are we?”

Zim doesn’t look at him but narrows his eyes. Dib takes a moment to appreciate Zim’s face, his alien eyes and skin and antennae, the expressions that he makes that Dib still knows by heart.

“You don’t know?”

Dib shrugs. “I mean, obviously I know where it looks like we are. But, I just mean… where are we? Is this… I don’t know. Your PAK? My brain? This isn’t a memory, or—”

Zim grunts. Dib clenches his fist.

“— or anything like that,” he finishes.

“I don’t really know,” says Zim. “My PAK, your brain. Neither? Both? It’s hard to tell. I’ve never done this before.”

Dib nods.

“Never died before.”

Dib wants to reach for Zim. He wonders how horrible it must have been, how painful and terrifying and final it must have felt. In fact, he knows how horrible it was. He’d seen it.

He stuffs his hands in the pocket of… jeans. For the first time in years, he’s wearing jeans instead of his Resisty uniform pants or a pair of pajama pants or some other, un-Earthly garment that he had picked up while shopping around with Zim. He’s wearing jeans, and an old blue t-shirt, and he feels more human than he’s felt in years.

“Did it hurt?” Dib asks. “Dying?”

Zim shrugs. “You saw the memory.”

Dib frowns. “I guess so. I didn’t know if it was different.”

Zim’s arm tighten around himself, creating some kind of impenetrable barrier that Dib, for the life of him, can’t seem to break through. “The memories are the same. There is no difference.”

“And…” Dib doesn’t want to ask. He has to. “The stuff that’s not memories?”

Zim’s frown deepens. “What do you want me to say.”

“I don’t know,” says Dib. He pauses for a moment, letting himself stare at Zim’s face. “Anything, I guess. I didn’t think you’d talk to me again. I never thought I’d see you. Even like this.”

Zim doesn’t respond for a moment. He takes a deep breath. “Well, you seemed so desperate.”

“I was, Zim.”

Zim takes another deep breath. 

“I am.”

“I don’t understand you,” Zim says eventually. “You… you change your mind, only after I die.”

“No,” says Dib. “I just… I don’t know.” 

He doesn’t know what to say. He wonders if Zim hears him, if Zim can tell how conflicted he is, how hard he’s trying not to hurt Zim while also struggling with feelings and revelations that he just… needs to think through. 

He wonders if, here, Zim can hear him. He stares at Zim’s tight expression and silently asks.

Zim doesn’t move. He just stares ahead, his own face pensive, like he’s lost in his own thoughts. Dib tries again.

Zim doesn’t react.

Dib wonders if, here, Zim can’t hear Dib’s thoughts. Here, are they in some strange in-between place, neither Dib’s brain or Zim’s PAK, or maybe both, where they can just… be? Like normal? Like how it should be?

Dib pushes an extremely incendiary opinion about Vortian cuisine into the forefront of his brain. Zim’s expression doesn’t change. Dib screams Zim’s name, disparages the Tallest, calls GIR a useless hunk of scrap metal. Zim’s antennae don’t so much as twitch.

So, maybe Zim can’t hear. Dib breaths a sigh of relief just as Zim speaks.

“You don’t know,” he says.

“Zim,” says Dib softly, “you have no idea how grateful I am that you’re still in my life, after what I did. The fact that I could even get a second chance, even if… even if you’re angry, and you want nothing to do with me, I just… I’m just so happy that I could even begin to make it right by taking you to Devastis, and I just… I don’t know how to even tell you how sorry I am—”

“Hey, look!” says Zim, and he takes off running.

Dib follows cautiously, his eyes on the shape of Zim’s PAK-less back, his bobbing antennae, his shiny black boots. Something shifts in him. He picks up a jog and chases Zim to the end of the knoll, right before where it drops off and falls into the town below.

“That’s my nebula,” says Zim, pointing to the sky.

Dib looks where Zim is pointing and realizes that, yeah, that’s not something he’s familiar with. Nothing that he’s ever seen anywhere near Earth, not that he’s been near Earth in the recent past. 

It’s a nebula, all right, stretching in a thin, horizontal line across the sky in shades of bright cerulean. The cerulean stretches and branches off into different segments, and lines of pink hang like melting icicles below it. In some places, the blue and pink meld together, making shades of purple.

“It’s beautiful,” Dib says, and he means it. It takes up the whole sky, and it stuns him. 

“It’s mine,” Zim repeats. 

“It is?” asks Dib, turning to face Zim.

Zim’s face takes on a few different expressions at once. Eventually, he settles on a pained frown. “It was supposed to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Tallest promised it to me.”

Dib looks back up at the nebula, bright and huge in the sky above them, still so important to Zim that he sees it in his mind’s eye, even now.

“When?” he asks.

Next to him, Zim huffs. “When I started invader training. When I passed my exam. Before Operation Impending Doom One. When they sent me to Foodcourtia. Lots of times.”

“Really?” Dib asks.

Zim drops to the ground with a surprising thud, and, for a moment, Dib thinks he must have fallen. He didn’t, though, just sat, pulling his knees up and resting his chin on them, wrapping his arms around his legs.

“I know they never intended on giving it to me,” said Zim, his voice muffled as he spoke into his knees. "Not Miyuki, not Spork. Not Red or Purple." 

Dib drops and sits next to him, noting the way Zim’s antennae go flat against his head in warning before they relax again. 

“Where is it?” asks Dib.

Zim shakes his head. “We can’t go.”

“Why?” asks Dib. “Where is it?”

“Well within the Empire’s borders. Near Irk itself.”

“Huh,” says Dib. “Well, maybe, when the war is over, you can show it to me.”

He says it because he means it, and because he wants to see how Zim will react. Zim just pins his antennae to the base of his skull and squeezes himself tighter.

“It’s right there,” he says. “You can see it now.”

“Zim,” whispers Dib. 

At that, Zim’s head whips around, and he shoots Dib a furious glare. “_What_?” 

“I just…”

“You just what? What is it that you plan on saying to me, huh? How sorry you are to have invaded my privacy? How much you wished I hadn’t died? How great it would be, if things went back to how they were, before? You've said that before, Dib. I don't care.”

Zim stares at him, and Dib wonders, yet again, how they got here. How, after years of working together, fighting alongside each other, becoming friends and then best friends and then partners, could he have let it all fall apart? Without even noticing until it was too late?

Dib feels the tears prick at his eyes and he turns away, looking from Zim’s glare, more hurt than angry, to the nebula above them. 

“Why did your PAK attach to me?” he asks softly.

“I told you,” Zim grunts. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have any theories?”

Zim shuffles where he sits a little, but Dib doesn’t look over, too afraid of irritating Zim any more.

“I have one.”

His interest piqued, Dib sneaks a glance toward Zim. Zim’s not looking at him again. Instead, he’s hugging himself even tighter and staring down at the town below them.

“What is it?”

The muscles in Zim’s arms bunch as he grips himself so hard, Dib thinks it might hurt. 

“Irken PAKs weren’t… they don’t… ugh, how do I even explain this?” 

Dib waits.

“I was not designed for… anything different,” Zim finally says.

“What do you mean, different?”

Zim gives a frustrated groan. Dib can’t blame him.

“Irken PAKs are built for one master, an _irken_ being who will comply with _Irken_ codes of conduct and remain a… single entity.”

Dib has another question on his tongue, but Zim takes a breath.

“When an irken smeet is activated, the idea is that… that…. we don’t form bonds the way other life forms do. Because we have PAKs, we have everything we need. We do not need to rely on others for sustenance. We don’t need anyone to watch out for us while we sleep. We just… we are independent. We are encouraged to remain independent.”

Dib bites his lip. He knows enough about the Empire to know what Zim means by "encouraged." Zim shakes his head.

“Irkens are meant to be alone. We go on missions alone, or we take a robot to help us, but we don’t do things together. When Irk fights a war, the only other person whose name you know is your commanding officer’s. You don’t… there isn’t any bonding, or friendships, or…”

Zim squeezes his eyes shut.

“Partners?” asks Dib. 

Zim nods.

There’s a long pause as Dib waits for Zim to continue. Eventually, he does.

“My theory is… it isn’t entirely scientific.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s… It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t rooted in any… logic. Or facts.”

Dib scoots toward Zim, just an inch. Zim doesn’t seem to notice.

“Tell me anyway.”

Zim takes another deep breath, his face flushing like he’s embarrassed. Dib waits.

“When I first got to Earth, I was… already doubting that I was… that I could… that I was compatible with only working alone. But, I had GIR, and so it was just… it was fine. I could just ignore it, for the most part.”

Dib blinks. Zim had never told him that before.

“But, then, you… you, even when we were fighting, when we were enemies, you became… constant. You were always there. And then, when we decided to stop fighting, and I abandoned Irk, and we were just… friends…”

Dib remembers it well. Their first summer of friendship had been the one before they started their sophomore year of hi skool. They’d spent the entire summer together, hanging out every day, well into every night, becoming closer and closer friends until they were practically inseparable. Dependent on each other, but in a different way.

He remembers it with a kind of sadness, how joyful and desperate he’d been to have Zim as his friend, how he’d been so obsessed with doing everything that friends did, because he’d never had one before, and he was more than ready to make up for the lost time.

Had Zim felt the same way?

“Irkens don’t do that,” said Zim finally. “Irkens don’t have friends. Being loyal to anyone but the Tallest is considered a liability.”

Dib opens his mouth to say, as he’d always said, how wrong that is. How people need each other, even if they’re irkens, they’re still, well, _people_, and—

“When I realized that Irk wanted nothing to do with me, I realized I was free from that liability. I realized that I could do whatever I wanted, and, well, I wanted… to be friends.”

The tears prick at Dib’s eyes again, and he inches himself toward Zim again. Zim closes his eyes. 

“We only became closer after we joined the Resisty. And then, we got our ship, and we… we were together every moment. And I…”

Zim pauses, and Dib bites his lip. Zim shakes his head.

“No,” he says softly, seemingly to himself. “It’s true. I… I relied on you. I cared about you, more than I ever cared about anyone or anything else, including Irk and the Tallest.” He laughs briefly, joylessly. “When I died, the last thought I had was that I was happy you were safe. That’s not… that’s not how irkens are meant to think.”

Zim sighs again. 

“So, my theory. My theory is that my PAK attached itself to you because it knows you, perhaps as well as it knows me, and, in its confusion, it believes that it has two masters, not one. So, when I died, it… it adhered itself to you and accepted you as its new master.”

“Zim,” says Dib softly. He feels his brows furrow, and he wants Zim to look at him. 

“It’s not what PAKs are meant to do,” says Zim. “But, well, my PAK… well. I haven’t done what irkens are meant to do in years. Perhaps not ever, not really, if I’m being honest.” 

Dib bites his lip and waits until it seems like Zim is done talking. He wants to cry for how brave Zim is, how, out of the two of them, he’s somehow the one that’s more willing to be vulnerable, more open to embracing someone else so wholeheartedly. It makes him furious with himself. 

“I think you’re right,” says Dib softly. “I mean, you know… everything about me. And, you… you care about me.”

Zim just grunts. He turns his face away, so Dib is stuck staring at the back of his head.

“Zim,” says Dib softly. “I wish… I wish I’d listened, the first time you’d gotten mad at me. I wish I’d taken a second to understand what you were saying to me.” 

Zim shrugs, and Dib wonders if that’s it. If it’s too late now. Well, he thinks, if this is the last time Zim will ever talk to him, he should at least try, now, to be brave like Zim.

“You know, before you came to Earth, I didn’t have anyone, either,” he says, staring at the back of Zim’s head. “I was… well, you know. Totally alone, even if I had a dad and a sister. And then, you showed up, and it was like, you know, finally, someone who’ll give me the time of day. Even if it was so we could fight, it was something. You were the most important person in my life… basically from the first second I saw you. Or, I guess, from the first time you didn’t ignore me, or push me aside for something else.”

Zim still isn’t looking at him. Dib pushes on.

“If you don’t ever want to talk to me again after this, I get it. But, I guess, I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry. And I don’t just mean that I’m sorry for not listening to you about going back for that thing on Moo-Ping 10, or, you know, sorry for going through your memories and stuff. I mean, I am sorry for that stuff but I just… I didn’t… I never thought that you’d… feel like that, about me. I’m sorry I was such a dumbass about it. I’m sorry for not realizing how much you cared about me.” 

Zim’s whole body tenses. “You didn’t think I’d care because I’m Irken?”

“Because you’re _Zim_,” Dib emphasizes. “You’re not exactly subtle about your feelings most of the time. I thought… I thought the reason why you weren’t talking to me was because you didn’t have anything else to say. Not because you were hiding something from me. I mean, come on, Zim.” He chokes out a small, slightly hysterical laugh. “I’m not exactly the smartest guy when it comes to relationships and shit. You can probably tell by the fact that you’re the only person I’ve ever been remotely close to.”

Zim doesn’t say anything for a while. Dib sighs.

“I’m not trying to make excuses for myself,” he adds. “I’m just… I just wanted you to know that I didn’t want to hurt you. Fuck, I didn’t… I wish I’d realized how much I’ve been hurting you this entire time. I mean, I don’t think… I don’t blame you for wanting to get a new partner. I mean, I’d want to, if I were you. I just… I’ve been inconsiderate. I’ve been a dick. I never meant to, I just… wanted you to know that. I never meant to hurt you like that. I’m sorry.”

Zim shuffles awkwardly around, still holding himself tightly. He sneaks a look at Dib. 

“I just,” Dib says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Obviously. I just think… I don’t know how you do it, I guess.”

“Do what?” asks Zim.

“I mean… you grew up in a culture that tells you to be alone, like, an island. I grew up in the opposite. But you still… you just pushed past it, and you knew what you wanted and you… you accepted how you felt. You... grew up, I guess.”

He turns a little so he’s facing Zim. “I guess I never thought about what I’d do after the war, because the only thing I’ve ever been good at is fighting to protect other people. It's not... it's not like I'd ever thought that I could be... valuable, I guess, in any other way. So, I just thought that that would be all I did. But, you… you just… you’ve grown so much since I met you, Zim. Sometimes I feel like I’m still that stupid little kid who was willing to die fighting you for just a second of attention. And you’re not like that at all, anymore, and I _knew _that, I just… I didn’t think, I guess, what you being so different now could mean. For you, and, I mean, for the two of us.” 

Zim looks away, the praise, Dib knows, weighing heavy and probably a little uncomfortably in the air between them. “Thanks, I guess,” Zim says.

Zim stares at the sky again, and Dib follows his gaze. He thinks about Zim, that fantasy of being… wherever they were, together, in love. It’s the first time he lets himself really entertain the idea, because apparently, here, Zim isn’t in his head and he can actually think. He looks up at Zim’s nebula and wonders what it would be like.

He thinks, probably, that it wouldn’t be too different from what they’d had as best friends. They would still play video games and make up stupid voices to annoy each other with over the intercom, and, now that GIR was fixed, they’d play games with GIR like they used to, tossing toys or treats to each other as GIR made himself dizzy sprinting between them. Things like that. 

But, it would be different, he tells himself. Because, he’d prioritize Zim this time, and he wouldn’t go running headfirst into danger without thinking about how it would affect Zim, and he wouldn’t make a huge mess of things and force Zim to clean up after him. He would be smarter, better, more considerate and more thoughtful. He would consider Zim’s feelings and Zim would _tell _him his feelings, and they could be stupid and learn how to communicate together, and, maybe, it would all work out.

Would he do that? Could he?

The _yes_ shouts into his mind immediately. _Yes_, _of course_, if it means keeping Zim.

They could fight until the war was over and then Zim could show him all the places in the universe that Dib had never seen. After the war, they could do whatever they wanted, whatever Zim wanted, and Dib would just spend the rest of his life trying to be the partner that Zim deserves. Dib thinks about Zim’s fantasy, the warm, comfortable feeling of it, and he realizes that he’d never even entertained the idea of having that for himself — not with Zim, but, really, not with anybody. By the time Zim had come to Earth, Dib, already friendless and weird and with no social skills whatsoever, had resigned himself to a life without a love like that. 

But, by some miracle, Zim loved him like that.

Dib blinks as he realizes just how much he’d resigned himself to live without. He thinks about the boy he’d been when he and Zim had joined the Resisty — how young he’d looked, how much he’d thought he’d figured everything out. Before Zim had even come to Earth, Dib had basically given up on the idea of having friends, let alone a best friend, let alone someone like Zim. He'd decided to be a hero, instead, someone who chose to be alone for the sake of protecting other people. He looks over at Zim and thinks, again, how upsetting and impressive it is that Zim could even entertain the idea of this — of love — after everything he’d been brainwashed to believe when he was still loyal to the Empire. And Dib, a regular human being with no understanding of his own emotions whatsoever, hadn’t even come close to that. 

But, Dib wasn’t that babyfaced kid anymore. When he looked in the mirror these days, he saw an adult. Someone who, supposedly, could think critically on something and, maybe, hopefully, change his mind. He didn’t need to stay set in his ways forever. He didn’t need to deny himself something that he’d barely even given himself the chance to consider. 

He drifts off into Zim’s fantasy once again, lingering on the love that Zim had imagined between them — the way his fantasy-self had looked at Zim, the way he’d smiled, the way he’d looked happier than Dib had ever imagined feeling. Sure, he had been happy with Zim, before all of this had happened. But, seeing that, experiencing, just for a moment, the kind of happiness that Zim imagined they could have.

He wanted it.

He knew that there was probably a lot of work to be done, and that they would probably get it wrong a lot before they figured out how to get it right, but…

Zim’s fantasy replayed in Dib’s head, over and over, and he couldn’t stop it, and he didn’t want to, because, suddenly, it was looking like the best idea that anyone had ever had since the Tallest sent Zim to Earth. 

Dib laughs, and it shakes Zim from whatever thoughts he’s having.

“What?” asks Zim, his eyes narrowing. 

“I’m just…” Dib shakes his head and laughs again. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Well,” says Zim, his voice gruff, “we all knew that already.” 

Dib just sighs.

“I suppose…” Zim begins, but trails off.

Dib waits, but he can only wait for so long. “Yeah?” 

“I suppose… I could have been more… up front, with you. But, you know, it’s not… it isn’t easy, and I just… I would prefer it if you were… if we were _partners_, if it was that or nothing, and, I just… I didn’t want to—”

Zim buries his face in the crook of his elbow, briefly turning away from Dib. “I didn’t want you to find out and then leave.”

Dib sighs. “I wouldn’t,” he murmurs. “I won’t.” 

He leans forward and presses his forehead to Zim’s shoulder, just for a moment or two, just until Zim starts to turn back toward him.

“What did you mean by that?” Zim asks quietly. 

“By what?” 

“When you said… you didn’t know what it would mean. For the two of us.”

Dib slants a look at Zim and sees, to his surprise, hopefulness. He blinks.

“I guess it would depend,” Dib says.

“On what?”

“On you. On if you… on what you want to do. Like, get a new partner, after this, or… not.”

“Oh.” Zim nods, then looks away again. “I suppose both are still options.” 

Dib counts that as a victory.

“If you were to, you know, stay with me,” Dib says, “I just… I know I’d probably not be, like, perfect, right off the bat. But, I’d really try.”

“Try to do what?”

“To be more considerate,” says Dib. “To think about your feelings more. I mean, I know there’s a war going on and everything, but…”

He takes a leap of faith and shifts closer, so that, finally, the length of his side is pressed against Zim’s and he’s placing his hand a few inches behind Zim and leaning onto it. “I guess I realized that there’s more to life than fighting. I’m tired of us arguing, and I’m… I don’t ever want to make you upset like that again. And, you know, I kind of really need you in my life. To do anything, it seems.” 

Zim’s face turns up toward him, and now they’re close, closer than they’ve ever been, and Dib knows he’s probably not exactly ready for it, but he’s made Zim wait long enough.

“Only took me dying for you to realize that,” says Zim.

“I guess I’m a slow learner when it comes to this stuff. But, I promise, I’m learning.”

Zim’s mouth twists as he considers what Dib has to say. “You are?” 

“Yeah,” said Dib softly. “Sorry it’s taking so long.” 

Zim’s gaze darts to Dib’s mouth, and Dib feels his own face heat up in response.

“You…” Zim starts, before shutting his mouth. He furrows his brow. “You aren’t… you don’t…”

“I really am sorry for going through your PAK like that,” Dib says, bringing his free hand up to cup Zim’s cheek. “But it did give me a good idea.”

Zim visibly swallows. “It did?”

Dib takes a shaky breath and nods, and then he tilts his head down and leans forward slowly, giving Zim enough time to pull away, to smack him across the face, to push him out of this strange place that binds the two of their souls together. Zim makes a short squeaking sound, then tilts his own chin upward and hastily presses his mouth to Dib’s.

Dib’s heart thumps with excitement as Zim finally releases the death grip he’d had on himself to place on tentative hand on Dib’s knee. Dib feels himself smile into the kiss, and Zim smiles back against him and then shifts closer, reaching his other hand to grasp around the back of Dib’s neck. Dib pulls back just for a second, before leaning in again, tilting his head and pressing again, his entire body thrumming with excitement as Zim responds, pressing their mouths together so hard that it almost hurts. 

Eventually, Zim pulls away, and Dib grins at his flushed face, bright eyes, swollen mouth. He trails his thumb under the curve of Zim’s lower lip, and his grin widens as Zim closes his eyes against the touch.

“You _are_ an idiot,” Zim says. “We could have been doing that for years.” 

The words make Dib want to smile and cry at the same time. “I’ll make it up to you.” 

“Mmm, you had better.” 

Dib plants another quick kiss on Zim’s mouth. “I will,” he murmurs. “I promise, I will.” 

He pulls Zim closer and they sit and watch Zim’s nebula in comfortable silence. Dib plants a kiss on the side of Zim’s head and knows there’s still more to be said, more to parse through, but, for now, he feels light and joyful and everything he never thought he’d feel, and he reminds himself to decide later if this is what it feels like to be in love.

An alarm rips through their perfect silence, and Dib feels his stomach drop. He looks down and meets Zim’s shocked expression. 

“Shit,” he says. 

He gives Zim one more kiss before they stand. He holds Zim’s hand as he walks back toward the edge of the woods, to the source of the ringing. As he reaches the trees, he lets Zim go. 

“I’ll see you Devastis,” he promises.

Zim nods. 

Dib steps back into the woods and wanders for just a few moments before he opens his eyes in the cockpit. 

He looks up and meets the gaze of a furious-looking Lard Nar, then turns to see GIR, smiling dopily at him and still pressing his hand down on the answer button.

“Uh,” he says, turning back to Lard Nar. “Hey.”

“Hi, Dib.”

Dib stares, unsure, really, of what to do. He wants to sigh in relief at the feeling of _Zim_ flooding back into him, skating along the inside of his skin all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. He clasps his hand into a fist and feels a pleased tickle in return.

“I’m grateful that you’re so happy to see me,” says Lard Nar, his voice pitched with confusion. 

Dib looks back up, his mind resetting as he realizes that he’d started smiling.

“Uh, yeah,” he says.

Lard Nar narrows his eyes.

“I don’t think I even need to ask where you are right now.”

Dib shrugs.

“Right,” says Lard Nar. “In that case, I am informing you that, for your safety and the safety of the Resisty, I have ordered Agent Tak to retrieve you from Devastis and deliver you to headquarters for a psychological examination.”

Dib’s eyes go wide. “Wait—”

“Following the examination, I and the rest of the Resisty’s leadership will convene in order to deliberate what, exactly, we plan to do with you.”

“What do you mean, what you plan to do with me?” Dib asks. 

“Dib,” said Lard Nar. “You have been disobeying Resisty orders for some time now. You are insistent that your deceased partner is living within his PAK and is attached to your body.”

“That’s because—”

“You are at risk of termination from the organization,” says Lard Nar. “If you do not comply with my orders to return to headquarters immediately, you will very likely be fired.”

Dib’s eyes go even wider. “_What_?” 

Lard Nar, at least, looks regretful. “I’m sorry, Dib. But I can’t keep making exceptions for you.” 

“Lard Nar, you don’t understand—”

“Will you be changing course and coming directly to headquarters?”

Dib sets his jaw. “No.”

Lard Nar takes a breath and then narrows his eyes. “Very well. In that case, Tak will see you on Devastis, and I will see you at headquarters after your evaluation. Captain Lard Nar, signing off.”

Dib stares ahead as the call ends. 

“This Body Chamber thing better work,” he says. 

He feels an answering unease from Zim. From below his feet, he hears a crash, followed by manic giggling. He drops his face into his hands and groans.

**iii. **

Dib paces around the cockpit, wringing his hands and talking aloud to himself — well, himself and Zim. He ignores the whisper of delight that he gets from Zim as GIR trails behind him, copying his movements and mimicking his rambling. 

“So, if we go in through the southern entrance, we’ll have a clearer shot to the elevator — but, wait, the elevator’s probably busted.”

_We can use my PAK legs to scale down the elevator shaft. _

“What if it’s blocked? Is there another entrance?”

_There’s a staircase nearby. Uh, I think_.

“Okay, staircase, got it. And when do we think Tak will get there?”

_I expect she is already on Devastis now. Or, at least, waiting near it to see when we arrive._

“Shit, okay. So we’ve got the coordinates for the training center—”

_Testing center._

“Right. Okay. the testing center. And the Body Chamber is beneath it.”

_Yes._

“Okay. Okay. Okay.”

Dib stops pacing. GIR slams into his calf.

_Dib? _

“Yeah?”

_We can do this._

“What if we can’t?” Dib wails. “What if we get there and Tak’s waiting for us and she captures us, and then they pull your PAK off me and they destroy it and then they throw me in… in… in Resisty jail? What if we get there and the Body Chamber isn’t working? What if—”

_Dib._

“God, what?” 

_We can do this. We’ve gotten through worse._

“Maybe,” Dib allows, “but the last mission we went on, you freaking _died_, so pardon me for being a little nervous this time around.”

Zim gets agitated at that, and Dib takes a deep breath.

_Maybe Tak will want to help us._

“Tak never wants to help us.”

_Maybe we can convince her._

“Maybe we can throw GIR at her and run away.”

… _That’s also a good idea._

Dib runs his fingers through his hair and walks over to the elevator pad. He taps his heel down on it and ascends to his bedroom. He starts to change from the t-shirt and sweatpants he’s been wearing for… well, for weeks, now, into his Resisty uniform, grinning the whole while as his face gets warm. 

“So, remind me again how repulsive you find my body?”

_Shut up._

“No, I’m serious,” says Dib as he zips his fly, then reaches into the drawer for his undershirt. “What was it about my giant head and stupid long legs?”

His left hands comes up suddenly and delivers a light slap across his face, and he laughs. 

_We need to focus._

“I know, I know. Can’t I have fun for just a second?”

Zim rolls Dib’s eyes.

“Okay, fine.”

Out of habit, Dib slips into his jacket. He tugs the zipper up until he reaches the giant, metal lump on his chest, then pauses.

“Whatever,” he says, and he pulls the jacket back off and tosses it onto the floor. 

Dib looks around the bedroom. It’s a mess, with both his and Zim’s bunks unmade, his clothes all over the place, and various GIR parts that he hadn’t ended up needing piled in the corners.

_You’ll clean this up when we got back._

“Of course, Captain,” says Dib. 

He feels another annoyed grunt, and he thinks how nice it is to be able to mildly irritate Zim again.

They arrive on Devastis just hours later. Dib sits in the pilot’s seat and prepares to land while GIR stands in his lap, cooing and stroking the PAK.

“GIR, you’re being weird,” Dib says.

“I felt it kick!” GIR chirps.

“Please stop.”

He lands the ship and Zim snickers in the back of his head. He takes GIR by the arm and carries him out the back of the ship, then cloaks the ship. He feels Zim’s anxiety bouncing around the inside of his own brain, and he can only hope that they can get to the Body Chamber before Tak finds them. 

They aren’t so lucky. Tak’s waiting at the entrance of the dilapidated testing center, her arms crossed and her antennae pinned. 

“You’re making this terribly difficult, Dib,” she barks. “Stop fooling around and let’s go.” 

Her eyes stray to the bulge on Dib’s chest. Dib bites his lip.

“This isn’t a joke, Tak.” He stares her down as he approaches, still holding GIR by the hand, his little robot legs banging against Dib’s knee as they walk. “I wouldn’t just come to Devastis to fuck with you, you know?”

Tak shrugs. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Dib. You never were particularly stable, in my opinion.”

Dib frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“When I first met you, you were just a little smeet, fighting Zim for all you were worth. And then, next time I see you, you’re his friend? Irkens aren’t particularly prone to friendship, you know.”

“Yeah,” says Dib, his brow furrowing. “I know.”

“And now he’s gone, and you still can’t accept it. This obsession has lasted almost your entire lifetime, Dib, hasn’t it?”

Zim growls from somewhere inside his chest. Dib clenches his fists.

“Don’t you think it’s convenient that you have this new… situation, one that’s never been known to happen in all of Irk’s history, just so you can still have Zim around?”

Dib rolls his eyes. “Well, Zim’s not just any other irken, is he?”  


Tak laughs and shakes her head. “I’ll give you that.” Then, her expression becomes serious. “I’m trying to help you, Dib.” 

“I know that’s what you think you’re doing,” says Dib, and now he’s toe to toe with her. “If you really want to help me, you’ll get out of my way.”

“You can’t go in there,” says Tak, staring at the PAK, then looking into Dib's eyes. “The building is falling apart. You could die.”

Dib’s frown deepens. “I’ll be fine,” he says. 

Tak doesn’t step aside. She stares up at Dib with unwavering defiance, and Dib executes Plan B. 

He swings the hand gripping GIR around and hits Tak upside the head with the little robot, then bolts for the entrance.

He can hear Tak and GIR screaming. He breaks into a run, following Zim’s directions as he sprints through long-abandoned corridors, past crumbling walls. Zim’s warning is loud in his head, but he’s a second too late and his foot lands, hard, on a weak spot in the floor, and they go plummeting downwards.

Below them is a cavern, and Dib’s mind can only conjure images of cracked skulls and broken legs as he screams and falls. 

_Permission to take over control of the body!?_

“GRANTED!”

The PAK legs emerge immediately, and Dib feels himself get twisted so he’s facing the crumbled, broken ceiling, right before he’s caught. 

His brain is trying to catch up with the fact that he isn’t dead as the PAK legs slowly drop him to the ground. He stares up at the hole he’d just fallen through and tries to catch his breath.

_It’s okay_.

Dib’s panting, and he feels like he might pass out. He takes deep breaths as his vision fogs and then improves, as his hands and feet go numb and then regain feeling just as quickly.

_It’s okay! It’s okay!_

Dib touches a hand to the PAK, then traces along a spider leg, still out and dug into the ground. He closes his eyes and takes one more breath. 

When he opens his eyes, the hole that he’d fallen through is occupied by a small figure with bright purple eyes and an even smaller figure with teal ones. 

“Hi!” GIR shouts, waving a hand.

“Shit,” Dib murmurs. 

He goes to stand but find that he can’t, the residual shock of a near-death experience and, probably, his body’s own incompatibility with Zim’s PAK leaving him struggling to get his balance. He tries to stand and lands on his back. “Shit, Zim, help me!”

Tak dives toward them. Zim’s PAK legs lift Dib into the air so that his body is parallel to the floor and facing the ceiling again, and then they take off running.

It is technically “running,” although Dib feels less like a participant and more like an unfortunately-placed passenger as he clutches the PAK and tries to keep his feet from scraping against the ground as they go.

“Can you even see?” Dib shouts.

Zim sends him _don’t worry! _feelings, which don’t really keep him from worrying.

They sprint through the halls, the PAK legs clearly struggling to compensate for Dib’s extra size. They skidder and stagger as they go, and Dib yelps as he’s lurched sideways, downwards, forward. 

_Dib-creature, I had a thought_.

All four of Dib’s limbs are wrapped tightly around the PAK, which pinches at his skin as the spider legs scramble through the rubble.

“N-now?” he manages.

_Yes, now_.

“Okay, go for it.”

_I was wondering what you’d do for me, once I get this new body. To make up for before._

“Uh,” A crash behind him makes Dib scream a little without meaning to. “I don’t know?” he tries to think, his own voice high and unfamiliar. “Flowers? Dinners? Chocolate?” 

_What else?_

“Jesus!” Dib shouts as they almost get crushed, the PAK legs dodging a piece of falling debris and then stumbling as Dib is lurched to the side. “I don’t know, Zim, whatever you want!”

Immediately, a flash of shockingly explicit images flood Dib’s mind’s eye, one after the other. When his vision finally clears, he realizes his face is burning and his eyes are wide. Despite his fear, he cracks a smile.

“Not sure if that would could as making it up to you,” he says, the grin evident even in his voice. “That all looks pretty enjoyable to me.” 

_Really??_

Another crash and a furious scream from Tak jolt Dib back to the present.

“We need to focus,” he says.

_Right!_

They turn a sharp corner and Dib is suddenly dropped on his back. 

_We’re here._

He tries to sit up but fails, so he lets Zim help him get his body upright and walk to a huge metal door. 

“Is this—”

_The Body Chamber! _Zim screams. _I KNEW IT!_

“How do we get in?” 

“You _don’t_!”

Dib turns, and there she is, singed and smoking and furious. 

“Tak, come on!”

“_No_! Enough of this, Dib! You’ve put me and yourself in danger! We’re leaving!”

Dib feels the manic desperation rise, and, all at once, he’s crying.

“Please, Tak!” he weeps, and something clicks in his brain and he realizes that these aren’t his tears. “Please, just let me _try_!” 

Tak draws back, so startled and clearly disgusted by Dib’s tears that she hardly knows how to react. He grabs her shoulders and shakes her.

“Just let me try, and then you can do whatever you want! Please, Tak, I need to do this!”

Tak’s widened eyes go wider as he begs, and she gently puts her hands on his shoulders.

“Dib, wow, please calm down—”

“We’re already here, come on, just let me try!”

“Oh… okay. Okay, Dib. Let’s just… let’s calm down.”

Dib’s body straightens, and he lets Tak’s shoulders go. He turns on his heel and blasts the door open with a PAK laser. 

Behind him, he can hear some confused mumbling from Tak. Inside, he can feel Zim practically glowing with pride.

“Nice one, space boy,” he mumbles. “Who knew you could cry on command?” 

_Thank you._

They step through the doorway, careful to avoid the rubble. Dib takes in the room: the walls are lined with rows and rows of circles. The floor is metal and coated with a thick layer of dust.

“This place is weird,” Dib whispers.

“It used to be a smeetery,” says Tak from behind him. “Before we took it over. There isn't... what Zim's saying is down here, it isn't a thing.”

Dib turns back to watch as Tak catches up to him. She walks beside him, not looking at him, her mouth a thin line.

“Thanks for letting me do this,” he says. "Even if you don't believe me." 

Tak just groans. “Well, we’re already risking our lives coming down here. And I know… ugh. I know how much you cared about Zim. Losing him must… it must have been… displeasing.”

Dib feels himself smile at that. “To say that least,” he says.

Tak looks at him, confusion clear on her face. “Is this funny to you?” 

“No,” says Dib. “Well, yes. If this works out, it will be kind of funny.”

Tak just groans again.

Zim leads him to the Body Chamber, so close to him that it feels like he’s on Dib’s back, his arms around Dib’s shoulders, his legs wrapped around Dib’s hips. If Dib just felt, _really _felt, it was almost like Zim was here with him, the two of them walking together, making one set of footsteps in the dirt and the dust.

_Soon._

They reach the chamber, a large, metal cylinder that stretches from the floor all the way to the ceiling. Dib walks around it, inspecting it, but, really, he’s not sure what he’s seeing.

_ Here _ , says Zim, and Dib lets Zim guide his gaze.

Dib looks over and sees some kind of panel. It has a PAK-shaped impression in it. Dib looks at Tak and nods. Tak shrugs back at him.

Following Zim’s instructions, Dib reaches over and presses his hand to a touchscreen on the dashboard. The chamber starts to make a whirring sound, then flashes red for a moment. The whirring stops. 

“What happened?” asks Dib. “Is it broken?”

He hears a weary sigh from next to him, and then feels Tak’s gentle hand on his bicep. She pushes him aside just enough so that she can place her own hand on the touchscreen.

“Has to be Irken,” she explains.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The machine whirs again, and the PAK-shaped indent in the metal glows blue. 

“Alright, Dib,” says Tak. “Go for it, I guess.” 

Dib pauses. 

“Uh, Zim?” he asks, quietly, because talking to Zim is kind of embarrassing now that Tak’s here watching him.

_What?_

“How do I… uh… get this off me?”

_Oh. Um… did you try pulling it off?_

“Yeah, a lot of times, actually.”

_Okay, right. Hang on._

Dib waits, and he can feel the doubt radiating off Tak in waves. He pointedly does not look in her direction. He feels the PAK warming on his chest.

“I think… whatever you’re doing, do the opposite.”

_Okay, ugh, hold on._

The warming stops, and Dib takes a deep breath and tries to help by imagining the PAK detaching from his chest. He can hear Tak’s foot tapping.

He reaches under his undershirt, which had been effectively shredded during their flight from Tak, and puts his hands to the PAK. He keeps thinking thoughts of detachment and begins to pull gently on the PAK, but it’s his own quickening heartbeat, his own traitorous mind, that holds him back. 

_What is it?_

“I just…” Dib doesn’t want to say it. “What if this doesn’t work?” he whispers. “What if I get you unstuck from me, and the Body Chamber doesn’t work, and… and… what if that’s it?”

_Dib—_

“What if your PAK won’t bond to me again? What if this is it? What if—”

_Dib!_

Dib takes a breath and realizes he’s on the verge of tears again. “What if I’m being crazy?” he whispers. “What if none of this was ever real?”

He feels a hand on his shoulder again and turns to see Tak looking at him, still confused, he can tell, but sympathetic.

“It’ll be okay.”

Dib sniffs.

“You don’t even believe me.”

Tak blinks, then shakes her head. “I know you’re not crazy. But, we're here. It's now or never. Just let go, Dib.”

“I can’t—”

_Do what she says, Dib._

“Zim, I can’t— I can’t lose you again, I just—”

“Let go, Dib.”

_Let go, Dib. Have faith. I’ll see you soon._

Dib closes his eyes. After a moment, the metal on his chest goes shockingly cold.

The PAK drops into his shaking hands. 

Dib stares at it. He waits.

In his head, there’s nothing but silence. 

“Oh, god,” he says, his voice wobbling. “Oh, god, what did I do?”

The PAK port flashes blue, more insistent.

“Do it now, Dib,” says Tak. 

Dib stares at the PAK in his hands for one more second before planting it on the port. The port and the PAK both flash blue, and then pink, and then the whirring picks up. The PAK sinks into the inner mechanisms of the Body Chamber, and Dib watches his partner disappear with it.

Dib strains his ears to hear what’s happening inside, but all he can detect are some nauseatingly organic sounds combined with the clunks and whirs of machines running. Dib holds his breath the entire time. He doesn’t know whether to be excited that it’s working or devastated that it’s not. All he knows is that Zim’s out of his head. 

By some unbelievable twist of fate, he’s lonely.

He feels Tak’s small hand take his wrist, a quiet, questioning hum escaping from her as the machine begins to smoke.

“It’s broken,” says Dib, his voice cracking. “Shit, it’s broken, it’s—”

“Hold on,” says Tak, and Dib stills, looking down at her. She’s staring at the Body Chamber, confused. “I think… I think it’s… working? But, it can’t—”

A tall, rectangular panel in outer wall of the Body Chamber lights up green. An alarm dings once, just as a smiling irken face lights up above the panel. The port where Dib had placed the PAK reappears, empty again. The panel splits down the middle and parts, revealing the inside of the chamber, so filled with smoke and steam that Dib can’t see inside of it. He steps toward it anyway, waiting, hoping—

Through the smoke, a figure approaches, shaky on its feet but walking slowly toward him. The figure steps out of the chamber, dressed in an apron, goggles, and a weird, white hat. It stares at its hands as it approaches, clenching and unclenching its fists, its steps a little stilted.

The smoke clears. Goggled eyes meet Dib’s. 

Dib pauses for a second. “… Zim?”

Zim says nothing for a second. Then, he screams, “I DON’T KNOW WHY IT DRESSED ME IN THIS!” 

“_ZIM_!!”

Dib lurches forward. In an instant, his hands grip Zim’s shoulders,his mouth is on Zim’s, and every stupid, broken piece of his life falls right back into place.

He hears a shocked gasp from Tak. He ignores it and backs Zim into the outer wall of the chamber, crowding him against it until they’re pressed close together. He grabs Zim by the face with both hands, his heart beating out a desperate, manic call for him. Zim’s hands grab his face, too, and Zim kisses him back with just as much fervor, and Dib thinks that all of this joy flooding his system just might kill him. 

He draws back to ease Zim’s goggles up to his brow and beams when his eyes meet Zim’s. 

“Hi,” Zim gasps, breathless.

“Hi,” he says. “I missed you.”

“How did you possibly miss me?” Zim asks. “I was literally inside your brain. For weeks.”

“Don’t know,” says Dib with a borderline hysterical laugh. He pressed another hard kiss to Zim’s mouth, then pulls back. “Don’t know, just missed you. So much.”

He dives forward for another kiss, his neck cricking from the angle and his knees straining from the partially crouched position he’d needed to take in order to get his mouth to reach Zim’s. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to move, ever again.

Zim pulls back and presses his forehead against Dib’s, his eyes bright. _Fuck_, is all Dib can think. He never wants to look at anything else. 

“I love you,” says Zim. Dib’s already-pained knees nearly give out. “I know— I know you haven’t— you aren’t— you might not feel that way, yet, or, ever, but—”

“I love you, too,” says Dib, the words falling out of his mouth as naturally as if they’d always been there, buried under layers of repression and resignation. “I love you so much.”

Zim’s smile could light up the darkest galaxy. Dib pulls him closer and kisses him until his lungs scream for air, until he’s lightheaded, until Tak grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him backward, until GIR’s hysterical scream of _MASTER!! _nearly causes the walls to crash around them.

**iv.**

For a second, Dib doesn’t know where he is. He opens his eyes to a room aglow with the first light of morning. The bed beneath him is softer than anything he’s ever slept on before, and the sheets are silky against his bare skin. He inhales, appreciating the smell of the ocean. 

The room is warm and, while not exactly what he’d always pictured, it’s about as perfect as it could get. He’s comfortable, content, still a little sleepy. 

He turns his head and is shocked to find that Zim is still asleep next to him. He reaches for the nightstand and grabs his glasses, then slips them on, careful not to make too much noise or rustle the bed as he does. 

Zim turns toward him in his sleep, and Dib feels full to the point of bursting with a sensation of affection and joy.

Zim doesn’t sleep often. When he does, he steals the covers in the middle of the night, then overheats himself and throws them off the bed, leaving Dib to shiver himself awake a few minutes later. Zim, tiny as he is, stretches out and takes up almost the entire bed half the time. Zim likes to sleep with Dib’s back against his chest, as close as they could possibly be without actually sharing a body.

Dib reaches a hand out to cup Zim’s cheek, watching with a sense of wonder as Zim sighs into the touch. He shifts closer to Zim, the sheets rustling around him, smooth and soft against his entire body. 

When he does doze off, Zim’s a light sleeper. His eyes open as Dib scoots closer to him, and he places an ungloved hand over Dib’s. 

Dib lets Zim roll him onto his back and grins as Zim climbs on top of him. He likes the feeling, he thinks, of Zim flopped on top of him, their bodies pressed together, Zim’s mouth pressed against his own.

He holds Zim around the back, just under his PAK.

They kiss for a few lazy minutes, two people in no rush whatsoever.

Dib knows that this — what Lard Nar calls medical leave, what Tak calls vacation, what Zim calls suspension — will be over soon, and soon they’ll have to report for duty again. 

Lard Nar, bashful over the fact that he’d almost ordered the dissection of the last remaining piece of Zim’s soul, promised that they would go back to normal missions soon.

Dib’s ready for it, but he’s also not really in any hurry. He’s talked with Zim about diversifying their role with the Resisty, like doing more engineering work and, perhaps, engaging with more planning and delegating than throwing themselves into fire every day. Lard Nar agrees that it might be a good opportunity for them, provided that they report to headquarters for more training and not step a toe out of line in the meantime.

For now, he’s only gotten a few weeks to make up for years of lost time. Unsurprisingly, it actually does involve quite a few flower bouquets, unfathomable amounts of alien chocolate, and some very expensive dinners out, because apparently Zim likes to be spoiled.

He likes spoiling Zim. 

Zim pulls away, drops on more kiss on Dib’s lips, then pulls away again.

“What do you want to do today?” he asks, his voice raspy from sleep.

“Whatever you want to do,” Dib says with a smile.

Zim’s grin takes up his entire face. “I could show you around,” he offers, as if they would have come to this planet for any other reason.

“Sounds good,” Dib agrees. “Maybe, sleep more first?”

Zim arches a brow in his inhuman, Zim-like way. “More sleep?” he asks.

“Well, we were up all night,” Dib argues, and Zim just shrugs and makes himself comfortable on Dib’s chest. 

Within a few moments, Zim’s asleep again.

Dib thinks they’ll probably stay up all night tonight, too. It’s difficult to justify tucking in early when the view of an enormous pink and blue nebula is so perfect from their window. It isn’t Zim’s nebula, which is still deep in Irk’s territory. Dib knows that he’ll get Zim there soon enough. He’ll do everything for Zim, because he owes him. More importantly, because he loves him. All in good time, he tells himself. 

For now, he hugs Zim tightly against his chest and closes his eyes, hesitant to fall asleep and leave behind this fantasy, come to life. 


End file.
